


Firefly (The Magical AU)

by performativezippers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: #SANVERS, Alternate Universe - Magic, Both a No-Powers AU and an All-Powers AU, But not Alternate Universe though, Danvers Sisters, F/F, Sort Of, The Magical AU, you'll figure it out - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-06-04 22:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15156938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/performativezippers/pseuds/performativezippers
Summary: When Alex is 27, the something in the world breaks. She’s not entirely sure what it is, but she knows immediately when it breaks.Because she’s just a regular person, just an FBI agent, who lives in a regular apartment and gets to work through a combination of walking and riding her gorgeous, expensive, but ultimately regular motorcycle. And everyone around her is the same. Regular people. Some good and some bad and some with hygiene issues, but just…regular.Until one day when Alex is 27, and all of a sudden, nothing is regular. Because now, all of a sudden, there’s magic.





	1. If You Can Do Magic, You’re A Danger To Yourself And Your Loved Ones!

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello and welcome. Why the fuck does this exist? I COULD NOT TELL YOU, please blame it on my dog.
> 
> This work takes the very rudimentary foundation for its magical lore from the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey. But it's mostly just ridiculous, as usual. Please enjoy.
> 
> Hope you like, my magical friends.

When Alex is 27, the something in the world breaks. She’s not entirely sure what **_it_** is, but she knows immediately when it breaks.

Because she’s just a regular person, just an FBI agent, who lives in a regular apartment and gets to work through a combination of walking and riding her gorgeous, expensive, but ultimately regular motorcycle.

And everyone around her is the same. Regular people. Some good and some bad and some with hygiene issues, but just…regular.

Until one day when Alex is 27, and all of a sudden, nothing is regular.

Because now, all of a sudden, there’s magic.

 

* * *

 

Apparently there always has been, but no one knew, other than the select few who passed the knowledge down generations. Because all of the sudden, not only is there magic – real, fucking actual _magic_ – but there’s history too. It’s sort of been around forever, even though it’s been missing for centuries.

And everyone knows magic isn’t real. Why the fuck would Harry Potter be so popular if magic were real? Why would they’ve had to use such bad special effects in the first movie if they could have actually flown kids around on brooms?

But none of that matters. Because, when Alex is 27, something in the world breaks apart, and suddenly magic is everywhere.

 

* * *

 

 _If You Can Do Magic, You’re A Danger To Yourself And Your Loved Ones_! Alex raises an eyebrow at the pamphlet her sister Kara has just given her. “Seems a little heavy handed, there. I mean, clickbait much?”

But Kara just shrugs. “You should read it,” she says. “Everyone is supposed to read it.”

Alex bristles. She doesn’t want to fucking read this magic propaganda. Everyone else, Kara included, is running around like they just got their Hogwarts letter, and Alex wonders if she’s the only one feeling incredibly betrayed. Lied to. Deceived, for her entire life. More than when she’d figured out that Santa wasn’t real, more than when she’d learned that fish don’t live happy lives in the ocean after being flushed down the toilet.

Because not only is magic apparently real – which is quite enough of a trip on its own – but her parents knew about it. Her parents knew about magic. Maybe even did magic. Practiced magic? Performed it? Whatever the terms, they might have done it, and they definitely knew about it.

Alex is pissed.

She puts the pamphlet aside, promising Kara (lying to Kara) that she’ll read it later.

She flips through Netflix, settling on _Die Hard_ because everyone in it is a human being who achieves things with only their strength and brains and there’s no magic in it whatsoever.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t mean to, but she does actually read the pamphlet the next morning over breakfast. The first couple of pages don’t tell her anything that she hasn’t learned from every single newspaper, radio show, and tv host in the world in the last week or two.

Magic is real, something was holding it away from the world for the last couple hundred years, but now it’s back. It’s back, and they’d all better get used to it. Stat.

She’s about to throw the pamphlet aside, but then the tone changes a little bit.

 _You Might Be Magic!_ it proclaims. “Fucking clickbait,” she mumbles, a piece of banana falling out of her mouth.

_Take a look at the following List of Characteristics! If More than Four apply to You, You might be Magic! If more than Four apply to You, You’ll need to be Examined by a Magic Inspector! Magic Inspectors will be Arriving to every City and Town in the Country within the next three Weeks. Please do not miss their Visit!_

Alex, for starters, just cannot with the random capitalization. She knows magic is old-timey or some shit, but, honestly. If they’re writing in English, in 2018, then they should follow the modern rules of the language. It’s just…gaudy. And all the exclamation points make her want to throw up. She’s just picturing all of it being read out loud by Ms. Miller, her horribly condescending kindergarten teacher, who Alex once bit out of pure frustration at being treated like she was dumb.

Hearing the last line of this section in Ms. Miller’s chipper voice actually makes Alex laugh so hard she chokes on her breakfast. _Remember! If you are Magic, You are a Danger to Everyone Around You!_

But the list of characteristics sobers Alex up quickly. Because, well…more than four of them apply to her.

There are just a bunch of things on there that she’s pretty sure are true for everyone. Like number 9, “When I’m angry, I literally see the color red.” She’d always thought that red film that covered her vision was what happened to everyone. Why on earth is there the phrase “seeing red” if people don’t actually see red?

But number 10 is true of her too (“My temper often controls me. I’m quick to anger”), and so are number 11 (“Sometimes when I’m upset, I feel like a tea kettle with steam coming out of my ears”) and number 12 (“I think quickly, and I’ve been told I act rashly, but my decisions are usually right”).

But she’s just an asshole with a short temper. That doesn’t mean anything.

But the next two are beyond true, and have been the cause of some of her biggest fights with Kara from their childhood. Number 13 is “My greatest fear is drowning” and 14 is “I don’t like to swim.” Kara always wanted a beach or lake vacation, and Alex always wanted mountain or city or anything else, really.

Alex hates the water. She dreams about drowning all the time. She’s dreamt about it forever. She wakes up sweaty and shaking and – come to think of it – the only thing that comforts her is thinking about the enormous bonfire she and her dad made one year, out on the beach in northern California.

And that just brings her right to number 15, “The most calming thing I can imagine is staring into a campfire.” That’s another one – is that…not true for everyone? How could anything possibly be more calming than watching the fire lick up the wood, hearing the crackles and pops, watching the embers and the sparks fly up into the night air?

Number 16 is also true, she realizes after a long moment. “I’ve never been burned, even when I’ve grabbed something hot off the stove.” She remembers that time in AP Chem when she’d, completely distracted by her best friend, grabbed a beaker off the open flame with her bare hands. Vicky had shouted, and her teacher had looked beyond flabbergasted that she wasn’t hurt.

Alex had always just assumed that she had tough skin. But…that’s seven in a row. That’s more than four. According to this stupid pamphlet, that might mean that she…what? Needs to visit the Sorting Hat?

She tosses _If You Can Do Magic, You’re A Danger To Yourself And Your Loved Ones_ over to the side, resolutely finishing her breakfast and heading to work just like regular.

Although, at work, she gently presses her fingertips against the bottom of the coffeemaker. It’s hot – she flicks water droplets onto it and they sizzle and dance around. But when she pushes her fingers down, she doesn’t feel anything but pressure.

Okay, she thinks. This magic thing might just be for real.

 

* * *

 

Kara comes over that night, and she’s twisting her fingers around. Alex hasn’t seen her this nervous since the night her parents had brought the girl home for the first time.

“Alex,” she says, and it’s nearly a whisper. “I know you think it’s dumb, but I need to talk to you about something.” She actually gulps, like a cartoon character. “About magic.”

Alex just looks over at her, hard. “What is it?”

“Did you read the pamphlet?”

Alex nods, a little cautious. She’s not sure about anything, and she’s definitely not sure she’s ready to talk to anyone about it. Even Kara.

“Well, I uh…” Kara fiddles with her glasses. “I have more than four of the characteristics.”

Alex sucks in a breath. “Which ones?”

“Uh,” Kara pulls out her own copy from her purse. It’s rumpled, like she’s taken it out and read it a bunch of times. “Numbers 17 through 24.”

Alex gives up the charade that she doesn’t have her copy of the pamphlet, which she’s been thinking of as _You’re Magic and That Means You’re Gonna Kill Your Friends Tonight!_ She pulls it out from under a stack of newspapers and flips quickly to the right page.

Numbers 17 through 24…do really sound like Kara.

  1. _Sometimes, in a pure mountain lake, I can see more fish swimming around than other people can_
  2. _I’m creative, both with solving problems in new ways and in creating art_
  3. _I’m usually calm and placid, but when I’m upset it’s like a tempest_
  4. _I can always tell what the weather is going to be_
  5. _I like to cleanse things_
  6. _My nightmares are all about fires_
  7. _The most calming thing I can imagine is floating in a clear body of water_
  8. _I’ve never had trouble in the water, even before I was taught to swim_



Alex has always made fun of Kara for saying “Look a fish!” when they’re in the water, and of course no one else sees one. It’s a joke now, that Kara’s always fucking with them when she says she sees one. But she’s always a little sad afterwards, and Kara’s not super great at fucking with people, so Alex has always wondered. And Kara’s an artist and has lots of creative ideas for how to solve things that Alex would rather bulldoze through. And Kara’s generally sweet and kind but an angry Kara is something truly glorious to behold. Kara never gets caught without an umbrella. Alex doesn’t know what cleansing is, other than the technical terms – that one doesn’t quite click. And she doesn’t know about Kara’s nightmares or calming thoughts. But, even when the waves have been huge, Kara’s never struggled at the beach or on a boat. Things that make Alex sick to think about – huge swamping waves, fast currents, deep water, jumping off waterfalls – they’ve always been sources of pleasure for Kara.

Alex gulps herself, then hands over her copy of _Your Magic Will Kill Your Friends!_

“Me too,” she whispers.

And Kara’s eyes slowly bug out at the ones Alex has circled, and they make somewhat startled eye contact.

“Do you,” Kara starts, her voice somewhere between reverent and freaked out, “do you think we’re wizards?”

 

* * *

 

They go to the stupid magic examination in National City a few days later. The woman running it is older, maybe 70 years old. She’s no nonsense – her hair is up in a somewhat curly bun, and she has glasses low on her nose, and she’s wearing a sharp black business suit. She reminds Alex of the women who work in the career postings in the FBI archive rooms.

Her name isn’t anything ridiculous, like Madame Flour or Mistress Lucifrinda. “Nancy Biron, CPA” she says crispy. “Let’s begin.”

There’s no Sorting Hat. She doesn’t have a wand, or even a staff. Nothing happens when she stands in front of each person – no colors swirl, nothing moves the leaves from the ground. It’s quiet. Every once in a while, she’ll touch someone lightly on their head or their shoulder, but that’s it.

She finally gets to Kara. She touches Kara’s shoulder, just the lightest touch with her fingertips. She’s close enough that Alex can see little rivulets of sweat running down from her hairline. It’s hot out here and she’s been doing this for hours. Nancy’s quiet for a long beat.

“Water,” she says crisply, “with more than incidental Earth affiliation.”

She steps smartly to the side, in front of Alex. Kara and Alex gape at each other for a second – isn’t she going to say anything else? But she’s already reaching for Alex.

She jerks her hand to a stop, just inches from Alex’s shoulder. “Fire,” she says, without even a second of hesitation.

She moves to the next person.

After their whole group is examined, she barks out orders. “You two, stay.” She points and Alex and Kara. “The rest of you, go home.”

“Wait,” someone calls from the crowd. “Are we magic?”

“Obviously not,” Nancy snaps, forcibly reminding Alex of Pam Carmichael at the agency when she’s tired and it’s the end of her shift and the stupid FBI agents haven’t checked anything back into the archives properly.

Alex is pretty sure she likes Nancy.

Everyone else leaves, grumbling.

“Um, excuse me,” Kara gushes, the words tumbling out of her mouth at full speed. “Are we…does this mean…” She hasn’t blinked in minutes. “Are we witches? Wizards, I mean?”

Nancy just rolls her eyes. “This isn’t Harry Potter, kid. You’re not a _wizard_. This is real life. There’s no such thing as potions class, no pointy witch hats, no enchanted staircases.”

Kara looks crestfallen and just a tiny bit affronted at being called “kid” by someone at least four inches shorter than she is.

But Nancy, gathering up her paperwork, says one more thing. “You’re not wizards, kid. You’re Mages. Magicians.”

 

* * *

 

There’s no Hogwarts, but there is school. Alex thinks it’s pretty ridiculous, but the literature Nancy gives them is even more hysterical than the general pamphlets.

_An Untrained Mage has a Forty Percent chance of Accidentally Killing their entire Family!_

_Just because you’ve Controlled it before doesn’t mean You won’t Grievously Harm someone Tomorrow!_

_If you Want your Loved Ones to Live, You’ll get Official Training from the U.S. Department of Magical Affairs!_

_Online Courses will do nothing but Speed up the Death of your Family!_

_This is actually a Very Serious Thing and we hope that you are Taking it with All Due Seriousness! MAGIC IS NOT A JOKE!_

Alex and Kara read them out loud to each other, their phony accents getting more and more ridiculous as they go. By the end, Kara’s in a full-on Effie Trinket impression (“ _May the Magic be Ever in your Favor!_ ”), and Alex is doubled over with laughter.

Even on Monday, when they show up to the U.S. Department of Magical Affairs Magic Academy of National City (or the very easy to pronounce acronym of USDMAMANC), Alex and Kara can’t stop leaning over to each other and whispering, in the most ostentatious voices possible, “ _MAGIC IS NOT A JOKE_ , YOUNG LADY.”

The other people around them don’t seem amused, but one woman over in the back corner sniggers a little.


	2. If you Blow up our new Friend, I’ll use my magic to Murder you in Your Sleep Tonight!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's a nice, ridiculously long one for you today (don't get used to it). If you're celebrating in the US, I hope you're wearing lots of sunscreen and remembering to drink water.

They’re separated by element, or affiliation. Fire with Fire, Water with Water. There’s also, predictably, Earth and Air. Alex and Kara ask to be trained together, but the instructor, Kevin, looks shocked. “A Fire and a Water? Absolutely not. You’d blow up the USDMAMANC before lunch.”

Kara looks like she’s going to accept that answer and fade back, but Alex has never backed down from anything. “We’re sisters,” she tells him. “We’ve worked together our whole lives.”

But Kevin just shakes his head. “It’s a miracle neither of you are dead already,” he says dryly.

 

* * *

 

The training is cool, but it’s pretty clear that most of the instructors are completely winging it. They know the theory behind everything, but it seems pretty obvious to Alex that they all lack experience with practical implementation. And that makes sense, because their instructors were the ones who had the knowledge about magic passed down to them, the ones who were secretly taught the theories and lore around it.

But since there was something keeping magic out of the world, other than the inherent traits inside of them – inside of all mages, like how Kara can’t drown and Alex can’t get burned – none of the instructors had ever actually _practiced_ magic until a month ago. Because the magic was all gone.

So, even the instructors are sort of flying by the seats of their pants.

But, still. Alex is smart, and learning the theory has always helped her execute in school and at work. She devours the texts, even though she has to read some from freaking scrolls because the scanner is broken and not all of them have been converted to PDF yet.

She learns that there are real, actual, magical creatures that live in fire, and, when she’s trained, they might pop out and chat with her. That’s fucking cool. She learns that she can attack someone with magic, and also use her magic to protect herself. She learns that Water is her enemy, but Air and Earth are allies to both of them.

That explains Kevin, anyway.

She learns how to identify who is what based how their magic feels.

Oh, and, she learns how to fucking _see magic_.

Apparently the red that she’d seen when she was mad? That was fucking magic. Linda, the instructor for the Fire students, teaches her how to sort of _twist_ her vision to see magic everywhere. The twist is a little like when Alex looks at that illusion that’s both a duck and a rabbit, and it takes a little purposeful snap to make herself see the duck.

Her magic looks like little red dust motes, floating through the air. They’re shimmery and glittery, like the sparks that shoot off a campfire. They’re beautiful.

They congregate around the other students and, once she learns how, Alex notices how they flee away from Kara, like she has some impenetrable barrier around herself.

Alex learns how to make that barrier around herself too, a shield, they call it. Alex fancies herself Wonder Woman. Her shield is red and orange and mutable – it flows and licks up itself, for all the world like a wall of flame between herself and the world.

She fucking loves it.

Kara tells her, over dinner, that when she sees magic it’s green and looks like little tiny droplets. They shy away from Alex, she says, like they know Alex will turn them to steam. Her shield is green and fluid, she says, and any attack on her shield will just be absorbed, like a pebble thrown into a stream.

Alex’s Wonder Woman shield would burn the shit out of any attack. She doesn’t need Linda to tell her that.

Kara’s instructor is Nancy, the one who tested them. The fact that Nancy’s Water explains why she hadn’t wanted to touch Alex, back in the examination. Alex likes that. It makes her feel powerful.

Nancy is working with Kara on meeting the creatures that live in the water. Apparently Kara _had_ been seeing things, all those times, but they weren’t fish. They were fucking magical creatures. Nancy’s impressed, and puts Kara on an accelerated course. Alex tries not to feel jealous.

 

* * *

 

It’s nothing like Hogwarts. They’ve taken over an office building in foreclosure, and done their best to convert it to a magical academy in a month. So, it’s a little industrial, a lot impersonal, and overall just shabby. The cafeteria doesn’t have long Affiliation Tables, where all the Fires feast together and send little emotional daggers over to the waters. Instead it’s clearly a converted breakroom, with plastic tables and most of the tines on the forks are bent. The food, while always served at the perfect temperature thanks to Linda, leaves a lot to be desired. Alex never wants to see a subway sandwich again.

Even though their elements are enemies, everyone comes and goes with ease around each other. There’s really good wifi, and they often gather to watch Netflix together at night after their final classes.

All the walls, both in the classrooms and in the adjacent student apartments, are beige and the carpets are a dull brown and could use a good cleaning. Alex asks Kara if she could use her Water powers for such a purpose, but Nancy hears her and sends her the dirtiest look imaginable.

Kara chokes on her drink and, if it were possible for her to drown, Alex might have had to be worried.

 

* * *

 

It’s not just visible, her magic.

Alex can feel it on her skin, like the heat from the sun. And she can taste it. Her Fire magic tastes like cinnamon and a hint of peaty smoke, like the sweet bitter crisp around a s’more, like a spicy tang of cayenne. The depth and heat of a strong curry, and the delicate crisp of a roasted brussels sprout.

When other Fire mages work around her, she can see their magic too, and feel it on her skin, and she can taste it. Each person’s Fire magic tastes a little different, leaving the air around them saturated with their own personal combination of spice and heat.

Linda’s is sweeter than Alex’s, like the top of a crème brulee, and Vasquez’s is a little thicker, like the edges of a steak.

Alex loves getting to feel and see and taste all of their Fire magics, but nothing compares to the taste of her own. Her magic tastes like a perfectly aged whiskey on a cold night, sipped under a blanket, next to a fire, under the brilliant stars.

 

* * *

 

After a few months, they have to start working with people from other elements. Water is supposed to start with Earth, and Fire with Air. But Alex and Kara are insistent.

“We live together,” Alex states firmly, arguing their case to Kevin. And it’s true, they’ve moved in together because neither of them is able to work right now, what with the whole full-time-Hogwarts-experience. They’re in the USDMAMANC student housing while they’re on leave from their jobs, and it was either live together or live with strangers.

“We need to learn to work together,” Kara pleads, and Alex can feel how Kara is using her Water powers to eel her way through the argument, “Or a disagreement could have catastrophic consequences.”

And Alex thinks she sounds a little too much like a pamphlet ( _If you Fight with your Sister about what Should Have happened in Moulin Rouge one more Time, you’ll Kill the Both of You this Weekend!_ ) but Kevin totally buys it.

“You’re right,” he says, and he always looks a little washed out to Alex, like his emotionless magic has sapped him of some of his life force. That’s a common thing with Air people, sometimes, she’s learned. They’re so removed. “It would be negligent not to train you to cooperate.”

He frowns a little bit, like he’s reading their magic. Alex, instinctively, calls up her shield. She fucking loves how she feels behind her shield, behind the wall of flame. With the smaller tendrils of flame snaking up her arms, with the sparks shooting from her fingertips.

She feels so fucking badass. She loves being a Fire mage.

“Stand down, Alexandra,” he says, reminding her uncomfortably of her mother (also, it turns out, an Air mage). “No need for shields.”

Alex disagrees – there’s always a need for a badass Fire shield, but she pulls it down anyway.

“I think you’d both do well with an Earth here in the Academy,” he says blandly, like Alex hadn’t just called up and then dismissed a literal wall of invisible fire. “She’s got a strong affinity for both Water and Fire, and she’s a great mediator. I think she’ll be helpful at the beginning. I’ll set it up.”

It’s a clear dismissal. Kara mocks Alex’s quick shield for the rest of the night.

Alex, using only the power of her mind, burns Kara’s dinner on purpose.

 

* * *

 

The next day, they’re waiting in an enclosed room. It’s shielded itself, Alex can feel that. She can feel the welcome heat of a Fire shield shimmering in the walls. It feels like stepping into the warm sunlight after being just slightly too chilly in the shade. She almost shudders with the pleasure of it on her skin.

Kara too is closing her eyes in bliss. She’s described the feeling of a Water shield as the fresh, soft slide of water when you dive into a pool that’s just the right amount of cool on a hot day. Not a shock, just an immediate sense of slick comfort.

Alex assumes there are Earth and Air shields in the room too, but she can’t see them or feel them.

Just then, Kevin comes in with another woman. She’s short and slim, a tiny wisp of a person, really. But, unlike the washed-out Kevin, she radiates life. Alex doesn’t know if there’s a magical term for “swagger,” but this woman has it in spades. She has dark hair, long and thick and a little curly, and an elastic band around her wrist. She’s wearing jeans and a gray t-shirt and boots and she looks a lot more comfortable in this room than Alex feels.

She’s strikingly beautiful.

Alex, completely intimidated, calls up just the tiniest spark of her fire. She lets one little flame, smaller than the size of her pinky nail, dance between her fingertips. It’s warm and soft and it immediately soothes her.

Kara doesn’t seem to notice, but the new woman’s head snaps over, like she can feel a disturbance in the force or something.

“Ladies,” Kevin says in his usual measured, somewhat bland tone. “This is Maggie Sawyer, Earth.” Maggie nods at them, and Alex finds herself nodding back, now cupping the little flame in her palm. “And here we have the Danvers sisters. Kara, Water, and Alex, Fire.”

Alex goes to lift her hand in recognition, but accidentally ends up flinging her tiny flame in Maggie’s direction.

She makes a strangled sound, too surprised and embarrassed to call an actual warning. But Maggie just, without a flicker of an expression across her face, lifts her hand and, from a distance of about four feet away, somehow easily swats it down. It hits the ground and is immediately extinguished by the shields in the floor.

“ALEX!” Kara’s clearly horrified, and Alex doesn’t blame her.

“I’m – I’m so sorry,” Alex manages to gasp.

But Maggie just smiles, a little sardonically, and Alex is in a full-blown panic, but shit, she has _dimples_. “Hope that’s not the best attack you’ve got, Fire.”

Alex sputters, but Maggie seems to take pity on her. “Seriously, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

And that almost makes it worse.

 

* * *

 

Kevin leaves, which Alex thinks is gross negligence. Maggie’s a student, just like they are. What the fuck kind of school leaves three students, two of whom are supposed to be potential mortal enemies and have all of the pent up resentment borne from having to share a bathroom during their teenage years, alone to do magic together for the first time?

It’s feeling more and more like Hogwarts by the second.

But Maggie is just clapping her hands together, like she’s ready to get started. “Okay,” she’s saying, and Alex wills herself not to think about how soothing and attractive her voice is. “So, the thing you have to do is learn to combine shields.”

“Wait, why?” Alex can’t help herself. “We just wanted to learn how to keep from accidentally blowing each other up.”

Maggie tilts her head a little bit, taking Alex in with a long, measuring look. “And how are you planning to do that without shielding together?”

Alex is beyond intimidated, but she’s never been the type to back down from a fight. “If we’re sharing a shield and we accidentally attack each other, we’ll both be trapped inside it with our magic, a.k.a. completely fucked. Isn’t the point to learn to shield strongly enough to shut each other down?”

“Ah.” Maggie’s head is still tilted, but now her eyes are twinkling. “The Fire approach: apply brute force until one of you is dead.”

Alex, for what feels like the sixth time in half as many minutes, sputters.

But Maggie just turns to Kara. “What do you think, Water?”

Kara speaks slowly, like she’s feeling her way through it. Like the first rivulet of water searching for a course down a rocky hill. “Well, if we’re able to combine shields, then we can’t use the elements in our shields to attack each other, and isn’t that where most of our power comes from?”

Maggie nods, looking at Kara with respect. Alex’s skin burns, like the Fire is ready to jump out of her and manifest right here on the floor.

“Yes and no,” Maggie’s saying. “Right now, most of your power comes from the elements of your shield, but that won’t be true forever. Eventually you’ll be able to pull Water power from the air itself, Kara, which will let you leave your shield completely intact.”

“Cool!” Kara’s eyes are wide, and Alex wonders who died and made Maggie queen of magic theory.

“Mostly, building a shared shield is a means to an end. For greater magics, you’ll need to know how to create and hold a cardinal shield with all four elements, yes, but for most of what you’ll do, you don’t actually need to build a shared shield with each other.”

Alex opens her mouth, but Maggie doesn’t give her the chance to finish. “But, if you can build a shield together, without the water dousing the fire, or the fire extinguishing the water, then you can do anything together.”

“It’s a test,” Alex declares.

“It’s an exercise,” Maggie corrects. “A shared goal.”

And Alex has never really been great at sharing.

“How come you’re teaching us? How’d you learn all this so fast?”

Maggie raises an eyebrow, like Alex’s tone was a little harder than she’d meant it to be.

Kara swoops in with the save. “Are you like the instructors? Were you one of the ones who knew, before?”

Maggie sort of shrugs one shoulder. “Yes and no,” she says again. Alex opens her mouth to protest – because that’s super annoying – but then Maggie keeps going. “No, I’m not like them. I wasn’t entrusted with the knowledge like they were. I hadn’t seen most of the old texts.” She slips the elastic band off her wrist and starts to gather her hair up into a ponytail as she explains. “But, I knew about magic before last month. I’d figured it out on my own.”

Alex can’t help but gape. “What! How?”

“I’m a detective, Firefly. I detect.”

Alex blinks, both at the nickname and the new information.

“Wait, you’re a detective?” It’s Kara, thankfully, who asks it, saving Alex from yet another accidentally biting question. Kara, of course, manages to make it sound excited.

“NCPD,” Maggie affirms. “Been on the force eight years.”

“So you knew about magic?” Alex steers the conversation back where it needs to go, the word _Firefly_ ringing in her brain.

“Yeah, I had suspicions forever, but I figured it out for sure a couple years ago. It was beyond obvious I was Earth, and I learned how to control some of what I had before the magic came back. Just little stuff – some minor healing on myself, and mostly growing plants. So I’ve had almost as much practice as the instructors.”

“You can heal yourself?” Kara’s practically jumping out of her skin, and, honestly, Alex is trying to play it cool but she’s agog too.

“Just little stuff,” Maggie cautions quickly. “Papercuts, bruises, that kind of stuff. I can’t fix anything major, although, now that the magic’s back, I should be able to at least speed up my own recoveries.”

“Awesome,” Kara breathes.

“But mostly, I own a little boutique nursery on the side, for plants that are a little more unusual. Rare orchids, bonsai trees, that sort of thing. I can always keep the tricky ones alive.” She looks at Alex and her eyes are twinkling as she waggles her fingers in the air. “Green thumbs.”

 

* * *

 

Alex and Kara’s first attempt to mesh their shields redefines the word “fiasco.” So do their second, and third, and fourth attempts.

Maggie shuts it down after the fourth, and she makes Alex go stand in the corner while she works one-on-one with Kara.

They, infuriatingly, build a shared shield on their second try. Or, so Kara’s excited sounds lead Alex to believe.

“Fire,” Maggie calls, her back to Alex, her voice carefully measured. “See what’s happening?”

Alex assumes it’s a taunt. “Hilarious, professor.”

But Maggie’s head shoots around, and Alex can feel their shield snap apart, like a crack in the tension in the room. “Wait,” Maggie’s saying, turning fully to face Alex. “Can you see my magic?”

“Uh, seeing that you’re Earth and I’m Fire? Obviously no.”

Maggie looks over at Kara, somewhat agog. “Can you see mine?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles, refusing to make eye contact with Alex. “It’s yellow and brown. But like, pretty.”

“ _What_?” Alex can’t believe it. “Can you see mine?”

Kara shakes her head. “Only Earth and Water, so far,” she says, but she’s still not looking at Alex.

Maggie, though, can’t stop staring at Alex. “You can see Fire, though, right? You can see your own magic?”

Alex rolls her eyes. “Duh.”

Maggie presses her lips together, and Kara steps forward. “Alex,” she says, and her voice is hard, like a wave slapping up against a jetty. “Be nice. She’s here to help us.”

And, damnit, she’s right. “Sorry,” she manages from between gritted teeth. “Yes, I can see Fire magic. No, I can’t see any others.”

Maggie nods a little, and something is softening in her face.

“Hey, Kara, why don’t you go get some lunch,” she says softly. “I’d like to work with Alex for a little bit.”

Kara shoots a stern look over her shoulder that clearly says _If you Blow up our new Friend, I’ll use my magic to Murder you in Your Sleep Tonight_! and she leaves the room.

 

* * *

 

“Come sit with me,” Maggie says, easily folding herself down onto the floor and crossing her legs.

Alex narrows her eyes – more kindergarten flashbacks – but she does it. Kara will seriously be mad if she’s mean again.

She calls up another tiny flame and flicks it between her fingers.

“You gonna throw that one at me too?”

Alex closes her fist, extinguishing it at once. “No. Sorry. Again.”

Maggie tilts her head, and something inside Alex’s chest feels a little bit like it’s under water. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. “I just…I didn’t know anyone could see other magics. And not…especially not her.”

“And not you,” Maggie finishes for her, but her voice is kind and gentle.

“It’s stupid. I just hate it when she’s better than me.”

Maggie gives her yet another measuring look, leaning back on her hands. “You’re older, yeah?”

Alex has the grace to grimace. “That obvious?”

Maggie grins. “Well, she’s taller, so your resentment has to come from somewhere.”

Alex, intentionally, flicks another tiny flame in Maggie’s direction.

Maggie laughs as she swats it away.

“So you can see that? As clearly as I can?”

She nods. “Wanna learn?”

 

* * *

 

Learning, it turns out, requires sitting very close together and holding hands. Alex’s heart is racing, but she’s sure it’s just because of her nervousness that she won’t pick up this new magic.

And, it turns out she’s right to be nervous. She’s trying as hard as she can – giving her mind that little _twist_ that works for Fire – but nothing happens.

“Hey,” Maggie finally says, opening her eyes but not letting go of Alex’s hands. “Stop trying so hard. You’re going in like Fire, and that’s not going to work. You need to let it come to you.”

Alex lets out a puff of air, but tries to show that she’s frustrated with herself, not with Maggie. “I don’t know what means, going in like Fire.”

Alex notices, belatedly, that Maggie’s softly rubbing her thumbs across the tops of Alex’s palms. “Fire burns the earth,” she says softly, and her voice has an almost hypnotic cadence. “But the earth can also bury a fire. And underneath the earth, of course, is a never-ending source of fire. And when that fire hits the air, it turns to earth. And air, of course, can help spread a fire, whipping it up, or air can blow it out. All of our elements are in balance with each other. But you’re out of balance, Alex.” Alex wants to protest, but Maggie’s still softly rubbing her hands and her voice is lulling Alex into a sense of comfort and she just can’t.

“You’re coming in like a forest fire, like you want to destroy and overrun everything in your path. And that could work with a particular type of Air mage, but it won’t work with me. My Earth magic is about growth. My Earth magic is a seedling, pushing up through the dirt to feel the warmth of the sun for the first time. My Earth magic is nurturing and warm and careful. My Earth magic is strong, and powerful; Earth magic can bring earthquakes and mudslides and rockfalls. But it’s also the magic of trees, and plants, and the growth of life. My Earth magic is methodical and soft and is strong because of that.”

Alex can barely breathe. She’s mesmerized.

“My Earth magic tastes like honey and resin, like caramel and dark chocolate and a ripe nectarine. It’s delicate and sweet and tender.”

Maggie twists her fingers, slipping easily from cupping Alex’s hands to entwining their fingers. “Find me there,” she breathes. “Reach out, with your magic, and find me in a tender, soft seedling. My magic is yellow and golden brown, but find me where it’s just turning green from the sun. Reach out, as soft as you can, and find me.”

And every other time Alex has used her magic it’s been with a rush a power, like the whoosh of a match hitting lighter fluid. But right here, on this floor, with her hands entangled with Maggie’s, she thinks about the smallest, gentlest fire she’s ever seen. How it doesn’t attack the log but lovingly licks up it, fragile and tender. How it reaches out, cautious and tenuous, to each new bit of kindling.

Alex reaches out with a delicate, thoughtful flame, and she finds Maggie.

She opens her eyes, and she almost gasps out loud. Maggie is haloed in yellows and golden browns and the bright greens of a new stalk. Like the winking of sunlight between dappled leaves. Maggie is surrounded by a dancing light of nourishing magic. And, interspersed between her sunlight yellows and her earthy golden browns and her tender greens, are Alex’s own oranges and reds. And they’re not attacking hers or trying to herd them or trying to multiply. They’re just there, intermixed and intermingled. Entwined.

Maggie sighs, and Alex has never heard her sigh before but she can tell it’s happy. “God,” Maggie whispers, all the muscles in her face and neck relaxing, and Alex isn’t sure that she even knows she’s speaking out loud. “Do you feel that?”

And Alex does. Her own magic feels like just before the start of a sunburn, when the heat on your skin is almost too much. But right now, combined with Maggie’s, it feels like laying on warm sand. It’s a rich, sustained heat, and it’s supportive, and it’s not almost too hot but it’s perfectly, permanently, warm. It connects Alex to all the parts of her body and all the parts of the room. It makes her warmer than she’s ever been, safer than she’s ever felt.

“Yeah,” she breathes back. “I feel it.”

  

* * *

 

Alex expects her magic to pull itself back, to stop dancing and swirling around Maggie. And she expects Maggie’s to leave her as well.

But they stay.

The two of them go down to the cafeteria to get lunch, and all four cardinal instructors snap their heads over to the pair as soon as they walk inside. “Interesting,” is all Kevin says.

Barbara, the Earth instructor, comes over to Alex. “May I?” she asks, holding out her hand.

Alex looks over to Maggie quickly, who gives her a tiny nod. Alex wishes she were holding hands with Maggie, but she reaches out anyway and puts her hand in Barbara’s.

Barbara doesn’t rub her thumbs over Alex’s skin, or twist their fingers together. Barbara doesn’t say anything except, “Let’s see here.”

Alex tries to _twist_ her mind into joining Barbara, but it feels like when a key is stuck in a lock, and it won’t go anywhere.

“Relax,” Maggie says softly.

“Maggie,” Barbara says, her eyes closed, “Can you lead me in?”

Alex sees Maggie nod. “Alex, I’m going to come find you, and I’m going to lead you to Barbara, okay? Just let me in when you feel me.”

Alex has no idea what that means, but she nods and closes her eyes.

Maggie puts her hand on Alex’s back, and Alex immediately feels a glow, like she’s photosynthesizing. And then she feels Maggie slip into her magic, like how their fingers had slipped together earlier. And Maggie doesn’t have to say anything, she just pulls – gently and firmly, for all the world like she’s taking Alex’s hand and tugging her through a doorway.

And they’ve known each other for only a couple of hours but Alex know she’ll never do anything but follow Maggie’s pull.

So she follows, and suddenly she feels Barbara’s magic.

She and Barbara don’t surround each other, not like she and Maggie. It’s less like an embrace ( _less like sex_ , a part of her mind whispers) and more like a handshake. But there’s definitely something, and Alex opens her eyes to see a mix of yellow and red magic flitting between them.

Alex feels Maggie pull herself out – take her hand off Alex’s back and remove her magic from their joining. Alex manages to stay clasped with Barbara, but she feels a little colder, like before she was warmed from the sand on her back and the sun on her front, but now she only has the sun.

And then Barbara says, “Very good, now let go,” and she pulls her hand away.

“Gather it back,” Maggie says softly in her ear. “Just invite it back into your skin.”

Alex does, and her magic flows back into her. She looks with wonder as the red all drifts away from Barbara, and comes back to be absorbed into Alex’s skin and hair and fingertips.

Barbara is left with only her own yellows and browns.

Alex turns to look.

Maggie is still surrounded with Alex’s magic, and Alex can see Maggie’s drifting around herself.

“Highly improbable,” Kevin says, his face blank.

“Fascinating,” Barbara adds, looking hard at the two of them. “Very fascinating.”


	3. Now that you have Stood in a Diamond Formation with your Friends And Enemies, you are No Longer likely to Kill Your Co-Workers and Neighbors!

Before they graduate, or whatever it is from the USDMAMANC, they’re supposed to learn how to work with their affiliate elements, which is a nice way of saying everyone who isn’t their opposite. So Alex has to learn not only to work with any Earth mage, but also any Air mage. Kara’s supposed to do the same.

They’re not required to work together, Alex and Kara, Fire and Water, but everyone thinks it’s a good idea, just in case.

But first, after a long series of arguments with Kevin, Linda, Nancy, and even Maggie, both sisters agree to learn to work with their affiliates before they try again with each other.

The improbable, fascinating thing between Alex and Maggie doesn’t go away. Alex always has at least a couple motes of Maggie’s Earth magic around her, even when they haven’t seen each other for days. And when they do see each other – when they’re in the same space – it looks like Alex’s magic surges over to Maggie. Like it’s being magnetically pulled over to her, like an Air mage is creating some sort of suction system.

It gets to the point where Alex can tell when Maggie’s nearby, because her Fire magic starts to flow purposefully through a particular wall.

And, of course, there’s a surge of yellow and golden brown that floods into Alex at the same time. Through her strongest shields, even.

All the instructors are baffled. There’s nothing about this in any of the texts that have been passed on from the time before the magic went away. But it’s not making either of them weaker – because even when Alex is hemorrhaging her own magic, it’s always replaced by Maggie’s. And she can, they learn at the end of one particularly exhausting session, use Maggie’s magic like she’d use her own.

So it’s not hurting anyone, and it’s not going away, so everyone sort of shrugs, accepts it, and moves on.

 

* * *

 

Maggie declares that, because of their thing, she and Alex can’t be each other’s affiliate for practice. Alex grumbles about it for days, but she gets it. She needs to learn to work with other Earth mages, not just close her eyes and slide into Maggie, something as easy and comfortable as slipping on her favorite jacket.

Alex works with Air first, through. Fire and Air are usually a little easier together, and Water with Earth. Except, some of the Air people and Alex really don’t get along. Those are the ones like Kevin – levelheaded to the point of flatness. Air and Fire are the two intellectual elements – although of course stereotypes don’t hold for everyone – but Fire is a little more “learn it and then do something,” while Air mages tend to be more invested in learning for the sake of learning.

The difference between an FBI scientist and a pure researcher, perhaps.

And Alex is all about action, and her decisions happen with lightning quickness, and one of the reasons she realized she was a Fire mage was her sharp temper. So she and the erudite, meticulous, emotionless academics don’t get along too well.

But there are a couple that she likes a lot.

The one she partners with in particular is a little dude named Winn, who works in IT. He’s not washed out or flat – he’s goofy and a little silly, and he has this earnest floppy-eared dog thing about him that Alex likes. And he’s also a completely brilliant hardware engineer, and Alex likes that too. And even though he’s high energy and bright, in a crisis he can lock down and focus, and he seems like the type of person who would love hard, but he’s got some distance between himself and other people. So it manifests differently, but he’s still definitely an Air.

It takes a while – and more than a couple of beers off campus – before Alex feels comfortable with him. But they, finally, manage to merge their shields.

Winn says that his ice-blue magic tastes like snow, and the first breeze of the fall, and a sharp crisp apple. The touch of his magic makes him feel like he’s flying.

When they merge, it feels to Alex like a breeze on a day that’s much too hot, the kind of breeze that cools the sweat pooling under your hair and at the small of your back.

When they get more comfortable together, they start doing joint magic. In a protected room, Alex starts a fire and Winn whips it up higher and higher. He carries the sparks to a waiting pile of wood in a different room without his wind extinguishing it. He practices blowing out fires without making them worse. She practices holding the flames steady even in his tornado of wind.

They work together to make a warm pocket of wind and, under the supervision of their instructors, actually send it up into the air to disband a tiny weather system hovering over the USDMAMANC. It _works_.

They controlled the fucking weather with their _minds_.

Kara buys them both a beer.

 

* * *

 

For her Earth affiliate, Maggie recommends that Alex work with someone named J’onn. He’s older than her by a significant bit, and he has this total dad thing going on.

He’s the calmest person Alex has ever met. Compared to Kara, Alex often considers herself to be calm. She’s never once, for example, cried hysterically about reality TV or whipped herself up into a frenzy over a text message.

But J’onn makes her look like Kara on four donuts and two cups of coffee.

J’onn just exudes this thing that immediate takes hold of Alex’s body and slows down how fast she’s vibrating. He walks into the room, and suddenly she feels how quickly she’s moving – physically and mentally and magically, and he just soothes her. Like how, when she was a kid, she could put her hand on her dog’s head, and he would just melt under her touch.

And Alex doesn’t feel that same blanket of calm with Maggie, exactly, but it’s not a completely dissimilar sensation. With Maggie she feels safe, and definitely quieter in her body than without her. _Fucking Earth mages_ , she realizes. What a cool power.

It takes a while to be able to mesh with J’onn, just like it did with Winn. She’d thought, when it took a while with Winn, that maybe she’s just more affiliated with Earth than with Air. That was what Nancy said when examining Kara, “Water, with more than incidental Earth affiliation.” Alex had assumed that explained the thing with her and Maggie.

But it takes her just as long with J’onn as with Winn, maybe even a little bit longer.

It explains nothing.

But they finally mesh their shields, and it feels good. Not as good as with Maggie, but good. Warm and solid, like a fire in a fireplace in a cozy cabin where you know nothing bad can happen to you. Where you know the fire can’t be blown out.

Their instructors bring in a planter full of frozen dirt and plants. The plants are frozen solid, but obviously they’ll die as soon as it’s thawed.

Alex and J’onn kill them in the attempt to bring them back to life. But the instructors just bring in planter after planter after planter.

It takes a week or so, but they finally do it. Alex learns how to feel the soil through J’onn’s magic. He learns how to moderate the heat that she offers. And, together, they slowly raise the temperature of the planter. J’onn revives the plants from the roots while Alex gradually, incrementally, warms them up.

They perfectly thaw a tomato plant, with two red, ripe, gorgeous tomatoes in perfect condition. They pull them off the plant and eat them, clinking them together to celebrate a job well done.

 

* * *

 

For their final task at USDMAMANC, Alex and Kara go back into the shielded room. This time in addition to the Fire shield, Alex can also feel the Air shield – like a wintry breeze – and the Earth shield – like the solidity of a log cabin, the earthiness of warm mulch.

The Air shield is fluid and mutable – Alex can barely even see it as it shimmers more quickly than a hummingbird. But the Earth shield is solid and firm. Where Alex’s shield would eat an attack, and the Air shield would skirt to avoid it, the Earth shield would just absorb the blow.

After today, Alex hopes she’ll be able to see and feel the Water shield too.

The next people to come in are the instructors. Barbara for Earth, Kevin for Air, Nancy for Water, and Linda for Fire. They don’t say much, and Alex tries to tune them out. She’s always been good at tests, but Kevin makes her a little anxious. He’s so unflappable, and she just keeps being flapped.

After the instructors, Winn and a dark-haired woman that Alex doesn’t know come in. Kara obviously knows her though, bounding over and giving her a seriously big hug. Alex and Winn fist bump, and Alex was honestly on the fence about if _that_ was too intimate. She wonders if this difference between herself and Kara is a just a personality thing or if it’s a Water/Fire thing.

“Alex,” Kara beams from across the room, “Come meet Lena! My Air partner!”

Ah. Lena. The Lena that Kara hasn’t shut up about for at least a week. Lena _Luthor_.

Of L-Corp.

When Kara’d told her, Alex had nearly shat herself with surprise. Who’d have guessed that Lena Luthor, CEO, billionaire, and tech wizard, was also _actually_ a wizard?

Alex walks over and shakes her hand, willing herself to grip tightly and not to accidentally shoot tiny flames at Lena. “Nice to meet you,” she says, and Lena’s responding eyebrow tells her that she’s not as subtle as she thinks she is.

“You too.” Lena is, of course, like most Air mages, infuriatingly impossible to read.

Alex retreats back to Winn, who couldn’t hide a single feeling if it were going to kill him.

Vasquez comes in next, another Fire that Alex likes a lot, who works for the military. She’s with James, who happens to be a relatively famous photographer, if you follow that sort of thing (which Alex definitely doesn’t and Kara definitely does). He’s a Water, but where Kara’s all bubbling brook and racing rapids, he’s a still, deep lake.

He’s not quite as calming as J’onn, but Alex is pretty sure that meshing with the two of them might just swaddle her right to sleep.

And, speaking of J’onn. He and Maggie are the last to come in, and Alex watches as her magic rushes to the door even before it’s opened.

“What the fuck,” Winn whispers. “What’s happening to your magic?!”

The instructors are all watching too, but Alex just shrugs. “It’s just going to hang out with Maggie,” she says, pretending that it’s chill.

Lena Luthor meets her eyes and this time she’s raising both her brows. “Intriguing,” is all she says.

Fucking Air mages and their fucking perfect poker faces.

 

* * *

 

Their goal is to make a cardinal shield. Their goal is actually to make two cardinal shields, because more than one person can’t anchor for each element. They’re going to sub in and out, the eight of them, until they can do it in any formation.

When they can do that, they’ll graduate and go back into the world, no longer a danger to themselves or others. Alex can picture the pamphlet now. _Now that you have Stood in a Diamond Formation with your Friends And Enemies, you are No Longer likely to Kill Your Co-Workers and Neighbors!_

They start with Maggie, obviously, because she’s the strongest and the most stable of anyone. She goes to stand, alone, on the northern mark of the drawing of a compass on the floor.

“Alex,” she says after a couple of centering breaths, holding out her hand.

Alex starts. She wasn’t expecting to be up so quickly. Kara’s much better at meshing than Alex is. She expected to be last. The last person to join can be the weakest, because three other points will be held stable.

Joining second means that, when Air comes in, she’ll have to anchor Maggie, stabilizing her against her adversarial element. If something goes wrong, the backlash from it could seriously hurt Maggie, and Alex isn’t sure she’d be able to stop it. It’s a huge amount of trust that Maggie’s putting in her.

She feels the responsibility slamming up against her organs, but Maggie is standing there, holding her hand out, and asking for Alex to come join her.

So Alex calls up a tiny little flame, and she gently tosses it over to Maggie as she walks up. Maggie grins and reaches out for it and, instead of swatting it away, just closes her hand around it, extinguishing it and pulling its power into her own body.

Everyone makes a little sound of concerned surprise, because an Earth mage shouldn’t be able to handle that raw Fire magic. But Alex saw some of her own magic – the reds and oranges that had been floating around Maggie’s body – swoop down to protect Maggie’s hand from the flame. Like a little tiny Fire shield.

She’s not as well read in magic as Maggie and the instructors are, but she’s pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen.

But Maggie seems completely unphased, like she wasn’t surprised at all. She simply holds out her hand again, looking closely at Alex. “You ready, Firefly?” Her voice is soft, private, even in this room filled with ten other magicians.

Alex nods, resolute. She’s brave, and she’s strong, and she’d die before she let Maggie down. She puts her hand in Maggie’s. “Born ready. You?”

Maggie nods. “Fuck yeah,” she says, and Alex huffs out a laugh.

Maggie closes her eyes, but Alex leaves hers open. She watches as, without any real effort, just with a small _twist_ , a shield goes up around the two of them. It’s golden brown and yellow and sturdy and solid, and it’s red and orange and flickering and roaring. It’s seamless. Perfect.

It’s beautiful. Maggie’s beautiful, inside of it with her.

Alex just wants to live inside this shield, the two of them, for the rest of her life.

“Winn,” Maggie calls. “Take Alex’s hand.”

Alex is beyond grateful that she called Winn, instead of Lena. Alex has to do most of the work here, right now, to keep Maggie steady while Air joins them, and Alex has never meshed with Lena before.

Winn comes up, and he puts his hand in Alex’s. It’s shaking a little bit, but he holds firmly. Alex taps her thumb on this, _one, two, three,_ just like in practice. On _three_ they both exhale, and he tries to join the mesh.

There’s a cracking sound, and he’s flung across the room, bouncing harmlessly off a wall that Alex somehow hadn’t noticed is padded. But the Earth and Fire shield holds. Maggie squeezes Alex’s hand, and murmurs, “You okay?”

Alex nods hastily. “You? I’m so sorry.”

But Maggie just smiles and squeezes again. “I expected that to happen,” she says softly. “You’re doing great.”

They try again. _One, two, three_.

This time he isn’t physically displaced but Nancy has to intervene and douse the edge of the meshed shield because it accidentally set the sleeve of his plaid button-down on fire.

_One, two, three_.

A little bit of lightning whips through the room. Kara jumps in front of Lena to protect her, which Alex finds a little ridiculous because the lightning could fry a Water mage a lot quicker than an Air mage.

_One, two, three_.

It almost works, it’s maybe one breath away from meshing, but then Winn gets excited and accidentally starts a small tornado.

“Last time,” Kevin says. “After this, I’ll step in for Air.”

And, oh, Alex does not want that to happen.

Maggie twists her hand around in Alex’s, entwining their fingers again. She blows some of her magic over Alex’s face, like a dandelion. Alex giggles, then immediately tries to pull up her scary poker face. Maggie cracks a grin and squeezes her hand. “You’ve got this, hot stuff.”

Alex’s eyes go wide, and Maggie’s grin is likely to snap her face in half. “Get it?” she asks, her eyes dancing more than her magic. Her dimples are everywhere. “Cause Fire is hot?”

Alex groans, but she squeezes back, as tightly as she can.

They take a deep breath together, and then they turn to Winn.

_One, two, three_.

It works. It _works_. Winn’s Air, his cool breeze, his taste of snow, joins their shield. And it doesn’t cool it down or blow it apart but it adds to it. Now their shield is sturdy and voracious and whip-like. It’s golden brown and red and ice-blue. It shimmers around them, steady and ever-changing.

“Holy shit,” Alex breathes.

“Oh my fucking god,” Winn agrees.

“Badass,” Maggie adds, and she somehow has the presence of mind to rub her thumb up and down Alex’s hand.

The instructors call for James, not Kara, and Alex is disappointed but she gets why. Kara’s energy is a little harder to match, but James seems like the type who could more easily meet them wherever they are.

It takes only two failures before he joins. It helps that both Maggie and Winn can anchor Alex against him, instead of how Alex’d had to anchor Maggie all on her own. But the third try, he clicks in. He meshes, and it’s like nothing Alex has ever felt.

She’s never, not even with the biggest bonfire in the world, felt so complete. So at peace. So safe. And it doesn’t really make sense that the addition of her adversary – her enemy – would make her safer, but it does. Because suddenly she can taste the purest water and something a little salty, and she can smell the hot pavement after a rain. And she can see green flowing over their shield, making it stronger and filling in all the cracks.

They hold the shield for a long time, because now that it’s a complete cardinal, it doesn’t take nearly as much effort as when it was just three of them. Although, Alex is nearly sweating through her shirt from all the attempts leading up to this.

It isn’t until Maggie’s hand starts to tremble in hers that Alex calls it. She tries to get Maggie to drop first, but Maggie refuses.

Winn leaves first, and Alex barely manages to hold on. With just Maggie between herself and James, she’s struggling to keep her anchor. She feels like she’s being pulled out by a riptide, the sand too soft and useless under her scrabbling feet, the water reaching out to drag her under.

“Breathe, babe,” Maggie says tightly, her eyes squeezed shut with the effort and her hand painful in Alex’s. “Breathe with me. Find me.”

And Alex, with herculean effort, does. She finds Maggie, and she focuses her magic on Maggie. She can feel Maggie’s magic growing expedititiously over her, protecting her flames from James’ waves. Like a sandbag on a wharf, Maggie keeps her safe and dry.

They hold it stable, the three of them, for four long breaths. “James, drop,” Kevin says softly.

And once James breaks off, once his Water flows away, Alex can finally take a deep breath. Holding this shield with Maggie is honestly easier than holding it just herself. Maggie seems to feel the same because she lets herself sag a little bit, her shoulder pressing into Alex’s. Alex can hardly believe how hard Maggie just worked, to keep both her and James stable in that riot of magic. To simultaneously keep Alex dry and James wet. To keep her head above water and his body out of the flames.

Alex runs her thumb over Maggie’s hand this time. “Drop, Mags,” she says softly. “I’ve got you.”

And she does. She drops and, for one long breath, somehow the shield stays around the both of them, and it’s still golden brown and sturdy underneath the flames.

“Impossible,” she hears Kevin say.

“Apparently not.” Alex is pretty sure that almost haughty tone is Lena’s, and she can’t help but like her a little bit better for the sass.

But then the shield flickers, and suddenly it’s just Fire.

Alex leaves it up for a breath before she dismisses it, wanting to make sure it doesn’t have time to burn Maggie.

The second it’s gone, Maggie positively wilts against her, and Alex wraps a quick arm around her waist to hold her up. “I’ve got you,” she says again, before half-carrying her to a waiting chair.

Kara has to pull over another chair for Alex, because Maggie won’t let go of her hand.

 

* * *

 

Alex, Maggie, Winn, and James all get to rest while the other four try to create the second cardinal shield.

J’onn starts it, at the north mark. Alex isn’t sure if that’s because Earth always starts, or just because J’onn and Maggie both have that calm, anchoring energy. Alex would lean over to ask Maggie, but Maggie’s still a little slumped over, slowly sipping from the orange juice Barbara had handed her.

J’onn starts it, and Vasquez comes in for Fire next. It takes them four attempts to mesh. Alex is grateful for this whatever-it-is between herself and Maggie, because forming the cardinal was hard enough even with their head start.

But they can’t get Lena in. They try five times before she steps out and Kara steps up to western mark.

She can’t join either. Five failures.

They start again.

Lena anchors, and she and Kara join on the third try. Maggie, mostly recovered now, raises an eyebrow at Alex. Alex shrugs back, a clear _beats me_ , and Maggie’s fingers twitch in her hand.

The can’t bring Vasquez in. They finally manage to bring J’onn in after four failures, but they can’t complete the cardinal.

They’re all sweaty and shaking by the time the instructors call it.

The instructors step up to the compass to demonstrate what it can look like. Kevin begins, answering Alex’s question, because he’s Air, not Earth. Kevin begins, and he and Linda mesh after a moment of concentrated effort. It takes three times for Nancy to join, and Maggie drops her head onto Alex’s shoulder. Alex doesn’t fail to notice that she and Maggie weren’t that much worse than the instructors so far.

But Barbara joins seamlessly, and their cardinal is complete. Their shield is gorgeous, and it’s cool to see it from the outside. They hold it for a few long breaths, and Alex has gotten used to it all, but she takes a moment to appreciate the absurdity of four middle-aged adults, in blazers and practical flats and Kevin’s meticulous bowtie, holding hands with their eyes closed, surrounded by a sweeping shield of magic that they’re controlling with their minds and their wills.

They break apart, and it’s quick and seamless enough that Alex can’t tell who drops in what order.

“After lunch,” Kevin says mildly, like he didn’t just create a powerfully strong magic that could cause a natural disaster to wipe out all of mankind, “we’ll continue.”

Nancy pulls a baby wipe out of her purse to dab off some of the sweat running down her hairline.

 

* * *

 

Norma, the administrative professional who keeps the entire USDMAMANC running, brings in lunch. Chipotle burritos and a couple cases of La Croix. Alex can tell the school is invested in this test because each burrito has extra guacamole.

They eat their burritos sprawled out on the floor, the power of the room’s shields working together with the food and drink to replenish their personal power supplies.

After their burritos, they start working in different combinations. They find affiliate pairs that work well together and use those to stack the cardinals.

Alex and Maggie, obviously.

J’onn and Vasquez can mesh on the first or second try. Kara and Lena can too. And Winn and James surprise everyone by meshing perfectly on the second try.

So then it’s just a matter of combinations.

J’onn and Vasquez finally manage to bring in James, and then, together, they bring in Winn. The shield snaps into place, strong and perfect. Alex can see the four of them relaxing, the tension leaving their shoulders as they take in energy from the cardinal shield.

Alex can feel Kara vibrating with impatience next to her.

“Relax, Kar,” she murmurs, her hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Just relax.”

Finally it’s their turn again.

Maggie starts, brushing off Alex’s concerned sounds. She anchors as Alex, seamlessly, between one breath and another, lets her magic join Maggie’s.

As the Fire shield grows from within the Earth blockade, Alex is the one who twists her hand, linking their fingers.

“God,” Maggie whispers, and sounds are muffled from within the shield, so Alex knows no one else can hear them. “God, Firefly, you feel so good.” She turns her head up a little bit, like she’s basking in the sun.

And Alex knows exactly what she means. The Fire from the room’s shields – and the burrito and the rest – have filled her reserves of power, but Maggie’s Earth magic washing over her does something else entirely. It fills her over the top, it sweetens what she has. It’s like her power reserves are an emergency ration bar, and Maggie’s magic turns it into a delicious feast. Maggie’s magic is nectar.

Alex is addicted.

They try to bring in Kara first, but they can’t.

But they bring in Lena on the third try.

And from there, Kara joins after just one failure.

And meshing with her sister, meshing in this cardinal, is the most unbelievable thing Alex has ever felt. It’s hard to tell from inside, but Alex is pretty sure this shield is at least twice as strong as the last cardinal she and Maggie had made with James and Winn. Alex had felt complete then, secure, filled up. But this makes all of that just look like a little smoky cooking fire compared to this raging bonfire.

Alex has never felt this good. She’s pretty sure she could hold this shield for the rest of her life.

And it seems like Maggie might feel the same way. “Holy shit,” she mumbles, her eyes open now.

Alex feels Lena’s hand twitch in hers. “This is…remarkable.”

Alex can feel Kara’s vibrating excitement through the mesh.

Maggie can too. “Kara, make a tiny spout.”

Alex looks over at Maggie. She definitely hadn’t expected to create any magic from within the shield today. But Kara just nods, closes her eyes, and Alex feels a little pull in the mesh. It’s not like the twist she needs to create magic from her mind, it’s more like a tug. Like how a shallow current tugs against her ankles in a fast river.

And suddenly there’s a little fountain of water in the middle of the shield, just maybe three feet high.

“Lena,” Maggie says with a wink, “make it rain.”

Lena grins, and this time Alex feels something like a gust blowing through the mesh. And then the water is distributed, turning the spout into a gentle rainfall.

“Alex, keep us dry.”

Alex _twists,_ like striking a match against a matchbook, and concentrates, and she feels the solidity of Maggie’s hand in hers, and the quiet strength of Lena next to her. And the pure joy of her sister across the compass. Alex _twists_ and she warms the air above their heads, turning the water into a gentle steam before it hits them.

She watches as Maggie looks down at the puddle on the floor, concentrating hard. Alex feels a push in the mesh, like hands pressing gently on her abdomen. A water lily blossoms on the floor, apparently growing directly out of the bottom of their spherical shield.

Alex can’t help but grin as she looks around the circle.

This is _fucking cool_.

Maggie instructs Kara to stop creating water, and then has Lena stop her airflow. Without being asked, Alex heats up the ground until the water evaporates, but she and Maggie work together to protect the lily from the heat.

They disperse the cardinal shield in four breaths – Kara drops, then Lena, then Maggie, then Alex. Maggie bends down, scoops up the lily, and hands it to Alex.

“Well done, Firefly,” she says softly.

Alex takes it from her, and lets her hands linger a moment on Maggie’s freezing cold ones, using just a tiny bit of her magic to warm Maggie up.


	4. If you don’t Tell me what I Need to Know, I will set Your whole Family on Fire! With only my Mind!

They spend a few more days in the shielded room until they can form as many of the combinations for a cardinal shield as possible. The shield between Maggie, Alex, Kara, and Lena remains the strongest out of any of the possibilities, but Alex also loves the quiet peace of merging with J’onn, James, and Lena.

And the near-frantic energy of a shield with both Winn and Kara in it could probably power a small city for years. It’s fun, and it leaves Alex hyper for hours afterwards.

But then, abruptly, it’s over. They graduate from USDMAMANC. There’s no ceremony, no pomp, no robes. They simply shake hands with their instructors and move their belongings out of the USDMAMANC housing. (The Air mages are kind enough to summon strong enough winds to carry all of their belongings into the waiting trucks).

“If we ever need you,” Nancy tells them, absently overseeing the boxes and suitcases flying past her head, “We’ll be in touch.”

“How will you reach us?” Kara asks, a little breathlessly. “Will you send me a Nereid or a Selkie in the bathtub with a message?”

Alex balks – she and Kara are going back to their separate apartments, but still. She doesn’t want to have to check for mermaids or sea monsters every time she needs to pee during Sister Night.

But Nancy just stares blankly at Kara, doing what appears to be her best impression of Kevin. “I’ll text you.”

“Oh! Haha. Right.” Kara looks completely crestfallen.

Alex puts a comforting arm around her, even as the pamphlet pops, fully formed, into her brain.

_Even though you’re an Accomplished Mage, you can Still use your Smart Phone to send electronic Textual Messages! It isn’t Suddenly the year 1820!_

* * *

 

It’s weird, being back at work. Alex is back at the FBI, working in her lab and, every once in a while, doing field work. Kara’s back at CatCo, putting in ridiculously long hours as a junior reporter. They only went to USDMAMANC to learn how to control their powers, to ensure that they wouldn’t accidentally incinerate or drown their friends during an argument on game night. So now that they aren’t a danger to anyone, they’re supposed to be going back to their normal lives.

But Alex is finding that nearly impossible to do.

Kara’s having an easier time, because writing is creative, and she’s able to get people to tell her things, for interviews and exposes. And Alex always just thought those were talents of hers – quirks of her personality – but now she can literally see Kara’s magic helping her at work. Alex comes along on one interview, just for a puff piece about Alex’s favorite bar, and sees how Kara’s magic helps her eel her way through the owner’s defenses, until he’s telling her much more than he’d planned to. She isn’t hurting or manipulating him; she’s just able to divert the conversation because of her Water skill.

Her green droplets increase around her as they talk, shimmering and cascading and multiplying the longer the interview goes on. It’s beautiful.

But so, Kara can use her magic, or at least the lessons of her magic, at work.

But Alex just keeps absently setting pipettes on fire.

She decides to take initiative and starts going through the tests and exams to become more of a field operative. She’s in good shape, and her Fire will help make good snap decisions in the field, and she knows her way around a weapon.

She _is_ a weapon, if it comes down it, and she’s a lot more lethal than a regulation issue sidearm.

She won’t have Kara’s fluid interviewing skills, but she’s always found abject terror to be a _pretty_ good motivator too. She sniggers, thinking about the pamphlet they should send out as a warning to everyone she’ll be interrogating. _If you don’t Tell me what I Need to Know, I will set Your whole Family on Fire! With only my Mind!_

* * *

 

She hasn’t seen Maggie since graduation, but she still, even three months later, has a few motes of yellow and golden brown magic around her.

And she’s more careful with them now than she was before, but she’s pretty sure that the two plants in her apartment are perking up more because of Maggie’s residual magic than because of her erratic watering schedule.

 

* * *

 

About five months after leaving USDMAMANC, Alex is assigned a big drug trafficking case. The drugs have crossed a lot of state lines, so the FBI is involved, and the drugs are being cut with some pretty weird stuff, so Alex is useful for her prowess with a microscope as much as for her brand-new field skills.

They’re waiting in a conference room at headquarters for the rest of their task force to arrive. Alex is holding a cup of bad coffee in her right hand, and is using the barest wisp of her magic to gently keep it piping hot as she sips from it.

She looks over to her left hand, at the sort of sad muffin she’s holding. She’s pretty sure it would be better warm.

She grins to herself.

Another _twist_ , and just a few seconds, and it’s suddenly delicious.

She fucking loves being a magician, sometimes.

But, suddenly, she feels like she’s bleeding out. All of her vitality, her energy, is sapped from her body. She looks around, desperately, trying to figure out what type of attack this is, and why no one else seems to be feeling it.

A split second before she panics, she realizes that it’s her magic. Her magic is positively fleeing the room, streaming through the eastern wall of the bleak room like it’s being pulled like a magnet.

She chokes back the yell that was bubbling in her throat, giving herself a second. She raises her shield from the simmer she always keeps it on, cranking it up to a full boil. And still her magic pours out of the room, like her shield isn’t even there. And, well, her magic has only ever done this for one reason before.

So, either she’s about to be murdered by a much more powerful mage, or…

And then, like a fucking vision, a stream of yellow and golden brown pours through the same wall. The Earth magic surges through her shield like the walls of flame are nothing, settling on Alex’s skin and in her hair like it belongs there.

Alex takes a deep breath, drinking in the feeling she hasn’t felt in almost half a year. The feeling of warm, solid, sun-warmed earth. The feeling of life, of growth, of lying in the shade of a tree on a hot day.

The feeling of being perfectly, roundly, fully complete. Balanced.

She’s halfway to the door before it even opens.

Alex’s boss greets the task force as they come in. Alex shakes hands with four interchangeable white men in suits before she even catches sight of Maggie. And the second their eyes meet, the magic around Alex seems to sing. Her own magic – her sparks of orange and red, and her shield of flames, all start to vibrate, leaning and keening and yearning towards Maggie. Maggie’s magic dances between Alex’s fingers and ducks underneath her hair and zings around her neck.

And Alex can see her own magic – all of the sparks that had streamed over to Maggie – swirling and licking all around Maggie’s body, from the specks floating into the tops of her boots to the ones making a home in her hair, lighting her up with a beautiful red and orange halo like some kind of goddess.

Maggie’s own shield, dense and sturdy and grounded, tilts, just a little, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, over to Alex.

Maggie introduces herself to Alex’s boss, shaking his hand, before turning to Alex. She holds out her hand, and she’s grinning, and Alex feels like her own magic is disemboweling her while Maggie’s is, simultaneously, putting her back together.

Alex slides her hand into Maggie’s, unable to look away.

“Hey, Alex,” Maggie says, and her voice is impressively level as they shake.

Alex feels like she’s going to burst into flames.

“Maggie,” she manages.

And it’s okay that they’re only shaking hands, because their magic is embracing for them. Their magic, now that they’re touching, now that they’re this close, is doing the equivalent of that hug the girls on Alex’s college rugby team used to do, where two girls would run at each other and one would leap up, throwing her legs around the other’s waist, and they’d laugh and spin and clutch each other like they hadn’t seen each other for years.

Alex can practically feel Maggie’s legs around her waist, Maggie’s arms around her neck, Maggie’s breath in her ear. She wonders if the real thing would be more or less intimate than what’s happening now. Than how her magic is wrapping around Maggie like it never wants to leave her alone. Than how her magic is tucking itself into places Alex can only dream of – the insides of Maggie’s wrists, the nape of her neck. Down her shirt.

Than the firm press of Maggie’s magic up against her stomach, her legs, her throat.

Maggie slides her hand out of Alex’s, her eyes a little wide, like she’s overwhelmed too.

“You two have met?” Alex’s boss asks, slightly idiotically for someone whose job is to notice things about people.

“Oh yeah,” Maggie says casually. Her magic drifts into Alex’s mouth, and Alex gets the faintest hint of caramel and dark chocolate and ripe fig. “We go way back.”

 

* * *

 

Maggie pours herself a cup of coffee before discretely placing it in Alex’s hand, murmuring a soft, “Heat that up for me, will you, Firefly?”

Alex hopes Maggie thinks her blush is from the exertion of the magic.

 

* * *

 

During a particularly boring part of the meeting, when Alex’s boss is explaining something that she understood weeks ago, when he said it for the first of what’s turned out to be many times, she makes eye contact with Maggie.

Maggie rolls her eyes a little bit, clearly bored off her ass too.

Alex calls up a little flame, just the size of her pinky nail. She flicks it over to Maggie, who, biting back a grin, closes her fist around it.

 

* * *

 

The case is a slog, but Alex doesn’t mind, because that means more time with Maggie. After a few weeks of only seeing each other in task force meetings, Maggie volunteers to bring Alex with her to check out a lead. “To show you how us local cops do it,” she says, her eyes glinting but her tone still professional in front of Alex’s supervising agent.

He nods his permission, and the two mages slip out of the room together.

Alex notices the second they’re alone together. She tries to keep her cool, but her magic has no such compunctions. It swirls and dances, literally creating a hot wind around Maggie’s body as it writhes and wiggles in excitement. It jumps up from embers to actual happy flames.

Alex would be beyond embarrassed, but she can see that Maggie’s magic is doing the same. Less flamboyantly, less loudly, but it’s started to wrap around her like a series of vines up a trellis, twisting and surging up her body. It starts at her feet, and by the time Alex looks down, both of her legs are completely encased in Maggie’s yellow magic. It’s like she’s been dipped in gold.

Maggie just grins at her, making some little comment about how Earth magic looks good on her, and Alex doesn’t know if she’s ever been so happy.

 

* * *

 

It turns out they work phenomenally well together. People just trust Maggie. She’s got that calm, cool, compassionate thing going on, and Alex can see her magic soothing and gentling and coaxing everyone around her into confessing their secrets.

And, when the soft touch doesn’t work, Alex steps in to play bad cop. She summons a stronger shield – not because she’s afraid or defensive but because it makes her feel so fucking powerful. She summons her Fire, and she basks in its heat, and she stares down suspects and she lets the Fire creep into her voice and the movements of her body.

She watches as her magic doesn’t touch or hurt the person, but how it makes them anxious, makes them on edge. Makes some part of their little lizard brain aware that they’re in danger.

They tend to flee from her, right back into Maggie, babbling out what they know. And Maggie’s magic soothes them, and, behind their backs, the Earth and Fire magic give each other the magical equivalent of a high five.

It’s totally badass.

 

* * *

 

Their combined shield is bulletproof, it turns out.

They’re following up on a lead, and they’re in an alley, because apparently all the stereotypes about crime are true. They’re in an alley, and the guy they’re talking to is waffling, trying to figure out if he really wants to reneg on their agreement for the third time.

Alex wants to throttle him, but Maggie is patient. She’s been cultivating him, and Alex knows by now that when Maggie takes the time and effort to cultivate something, it always blossoms. So Alex tries to mute her presence. She pulls most of her magic back into her skin, trying not to freak him out or make him feel threatened.

She feels the warm, soft caress of Maggie’s magic on her cheek as an absent thank you.

But then a sound at the opening of the alley startles Alex into action. Without thinking for a second, she darts out her hand and, in the same instant, flings her magic over to Maggie.

Maggie takes both her hand and her magic seamlessly, slipping them into their mesh.

Alex takes a millisecond to sigh in relief, because they haven’t meshed in over six months and this feels more like coming home than anything. Their shield is all strong borders and thick heavy walls, and crackling towers of angry flames.

Alex can see through it perfectly, even though she can also see how real and firm it is (although, of course, anyone who isn’t a mage can’t see anything at all). But back at USDMAMANC Alex had learned the _twist_ for seeing both realities at once – the magical and the mundane.

So she can see their shield just as well as she can see the man at the opening of the alley raise his gun, and shoot a bullet right at Maggie.

Alex doesn’t have time to think – bullets are _fast_. She just reacts. Her flames, tall and strong before, roar to life, crackling and whooshing both up and out. Their original shield was tall – maybe ten feet, but now the flames are easily three times that high, and they’re pushing out further, the fire racing and reaching towards the shooter.

Alex’s fire is absolutely sucking all of the air out of the alley, and she understands, with a tiny flicker of her mind, how her element can be the enemy of Air and Earth, too. Because her fire, without Maggie’s anchor, would have already scorched every fucking inch of this alley.

Her fire leaps for the sky and for the shooter and that, combined with the solidity of Maggie’s impossibly strong Earth shield, stops the bullet in its tracks.

Alex is seeing red. Her magic is screaming for vengeance. He tried to shoot Maggie. He tried to kill Maggie. The bullet is gone but her flames keep growing.

A creature emerges from the flames – something on four legs. It looks like a panther crossed with a snake. It’s lithe and long and it doesn’t walk so much as it glides across the alley. It has a sort of oozing quality to its movement – something sinister and impossibly sleek. But its head – it has the head of an efficiently lethal predator. It has real jaws and real teeth and a horribly hungry look on its face.

It’s entirely red and orange, although its feet are the hot blinding blue of the center of a blistering fire. It’s a creature of Fire.

Alex has never seen it before, but she knows, down to her bones, that it, like a lion or a shark, will do real, tangible, physical damage to anything it wants – magical creature or no. And it’s gliding out of the flames and towards the man with the gun.

“Alex,” Maggie says softly, “Call it back.”

And Alex tries, but she can’t. The fire is too big, too hot, too out of her control. She just watches, helplessly, as the creature moves closer and closer to the man, murder on its mind.

“Come on, Firefly,” Maggie says, and her voice is still so quiet and calm and hypnotic. She twists their fingers together, and it feels like something slots into place inside of Alex. “Come find me. Come find me, and bring it back to me.”

Alex tries. She tries to pull it back, to absorb it back into her skin, to bring her shields back down to a simmer. But she can’t. It’s too much.

It feels like she’s been trying for hours, even though only a few seconds have passed in the alley. She’s sweating and shaking with the effort. “I can’t,” she grits out, her teeth clenched, her eyes squeezed shut with the effort. “I can’t let it go enough to find you.”

She hears Maggie move in front of her, and then suddenly Maggie’s taken her other hand and she’s pulling all of their hands up, clasping all four together between their chests. She feels Maggie drop her head down onto Alex’s shoulder, her magic soothing the heat of Alex’s skin. “Yes you can,” she whispers, and it’s a miracle that Alex can hear her over the whooshing and roaring of the fire. “I’ve got you.” Her magic proves that to be true, helping to insulate Alex from her own magic. Alex feels a _push_ inside the mesh, and she knows that Maggie is erecting Earth barricades to try to keep the Fire creature from reaching the shooter.

“Come here, Firefly. Come let yourself into me.”

And finally, finally, Alex does. She relaxes her iron grip on her Fire, and lets herself completely slide into Maggie. She feels Maggie’s calm cover her – her control, her patience, her softness.

She feels Maggie’s Earth – lovingly, carefully, but quickly – smother her Fire.

The Fire creature winks out of existence, and her flames drop, leaving Alex with only the lowest possible simmer of Fire magic.

She shudders and almost collapses into Maggie’s body, and Maggie’s hands are suddenly slipping out of hers. There’s a split second of loss until Maggie’s arms wrap tight around her waist, holding her up with surprising strength for someone so small.

She feels Maggie’s magic holding her up, keeping her together.

 

* * *

 

Maggie calls in backup and someone else from the task force processes the arrest of the shooter, who’d apparently felt enough of what had happened to piss himself with fear.

Alex is still sort of in a haze from the expenditure of magic, so Maggie wordlessly takes Alex back to her own apartment.

Maggie’s apartment is just…perfectly Maggie. It’s decorated in Earth colors – all yellows and golds and rich browns and hints of the fresh, bright green of brand new growth. There are plants everywhere – hanging from the ceiling and spilling over tables, dainty orchids on the windowsills, and four bonsai trees scattered across the living room.

It’s on the ground floor, and it has big windows that look out onto a little courtyard in the center of her apartment complex. It’s not a big courtyard but there are trees, and Alex is pretty sure that the trees closer to Maggie’s side of the building are bigger and stronger than the others.

Maggie fusses a little bit, taking off her shoes and flitting around rearranging blankets and rambling a little about what she has in the fridge.

She goes to put on her tea kettle, but Alex just rolls her eyes. She nudges Maggie out of the way with her hip, and places her hands on the tea kettle, frowning a little as she tries to _twist_. But it’s not coming.

“No, sit.” Maggie actually grabs her by the hips and steers her away from the stove. “You need to replenish your energy. Just sit, for a little bit.”

So Maggie makes tea with the stove – something Alex hasn’t bothered to do in six months. And she orders a pizza, and she starts methodically clearing stuff out of her fireplace. “I usually just use this for storage, since it’s not exactly a bitterly cold winter here in National City,” she explains, pulling a suitcase and couple empty planters out of the space. “But I used to use it, so I know it works.”

She runs out to the corner store for some wood, leaving Alex flopped on her couch, still in a bit of daze.

She comes back and, adorably, starts a fire with matches and newspaper and she has to blow on it, and it dies on her twice before she gets it going.

Once the pizza comes, they sit on the floor in front of the fire. And the hot tea and the food and the fire slowly fill Alex back up, until she feels almost normal.

“Feeling better?” Maggie’s voice is soft and her eyes are incredibly tender, and Alex knows that they’re about to talk about what happened. About how she lost control of her Fire.

She’s not quite ready, so she busies herself with reaching into the fire, barehanded, to rearrange the logs and place a new one on the top. She brushes her fingertips along the back of the new log, encouraging it to catch quickly. It does, gently and slowly, but steadily.

“Well, that’s handy,” Maggie says with a sweet smile. “Guess I can get rid of all those stupid pokers, with you around.”

And Alex likes the idea of being around that much, to cause even the smallest redecoration in Maggie’s home. She blushes and tries to fix her hair in an attempt to hide it.

But Maggie just reaches over, and gently touches her forehead. “You got soot all over yourself,” she murmurs. “Dirty little Firefly.”

 

* * *

 

“So,” Alex says, playing with her fingers. They’ve had another cup of tea and she’s eaten more pizza than she ever has in her life, and the fire is perfectly roaring. Time’s up. “That happened.”

Maggie tilts her head a little bit, looking closely at Alex. “It did.”

“Did you know our shield was bulletproof?”

Maggie shakes her head. “No. That, uh, was a pleasant surprise.”

And Alex can tell that Maggie’s trying to keep it light for her sake, but she can’t help but shudder at what would have happened if they’d had an unpleasant surprise.

She feels the tremble in her magic, and she tries to call it back into her skin before it gets out of control again. Maggie’s magic rushes over, helping to stabilize her, and she’s never been quite so grateful to be grounded before.

As soon she’s is stable, Alex drops her head into her hands and just breathes for a second. “I was so scared,” she mumbles.

Maggie’s hand comes to rest softly on her back. “I remember my first time having a gun pulled on me,” she says softly, her voice perfectly comforting. “It was incredibly scary.”

But Alex is sitting up straight, pulling her hands away and looking incredulously into Maggie’s eyes. “I wasn’t…I wasn’t scared because he had a _gun_.”

Maggie tilts again, clearly confused.

Alex huffs out a breath, like an impatient dragon. “I was scared because he was aiming it at _you_. He was…he was going to kill you.”

And Alex has called back all of her magic, but it looks like Maggie is melting. “Oh, Alex.”

“I just…” Alex can’t look at Maggie anymore. She stares into the flames, taking all the strength and comfort she can from them. “That’s why I lost control. I just—I just had to stop him. I—I couldn’t let him hurt you.”

And Maggie doesn’t say anything to that. She just skims her hand from Alex’s back, down her arm, and gently laces her fingers with Alex’s. She drops her head onto Alex’s shoulder, and Alex feels Maggie’s magic come up and wrap around them, like a blanket.

They stay there for a long time. When it gets cold, Alex uses her mind to keep the fire burning from nothing but embers, and she uses a touch of magic to heat up the blanket of golden brown Earth magic around them.

She wonders, as she drifts off to sleep, leaning against the couch, Maggie curled up into her side, if their magic will hold while they sleep.

As she blinks for the last few times, she sees something in the fire. A creature. Something small and sweet, fast and strong and watchful. It looks at Alex and it nods once, and does something like a bow.

Alex doesn’t know what it is, but she lets herself fall to sleep, comforted and safe, under the watchful eye of her magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and being the best imaginary friends in the world.
> 
> Come visit me on my tumblr (performativezippers) and twitter (p_zippers) to learn useless things about my life, read my rants, participate in dumb jokes about dinosaurs and magic, and support my other work. Heart ya.


	5. It is a very Stupid Idea to set your Friends on Fire just to Show Them that you Care about them!

They’re both a little skittish around each other in the morning. Partly it’s from the sore necks from sleeping in such weird positions all night, but it’s also everything else too. Alex is beyond embarrassed that she lost control of her powers, and she’s still trying to sort through exactly why it happened. Why she lost control like that.

While Maggie’s in the shower, Alex manages to convince herself that it was just because she was worried about what would happen with their entwined magic. Because Maggie has Alex’s magic, and Alex has Maggie’s, and they can’t know what would happen if one of them died. Would Alex’s magic come back to her, if Maggie died? Would it shrivel and perish? Would their strange link pull Alex down too, until she died?

That must have been it. Concern for the magic. That’s why she lost control.

But then Maggie steps out into the living room, and her hair is dripping wet, and she’s tucking her white t-shirt into her black jeans, and she’s barefoot and she’s not even wearing eyeliner, and it sucker punches Alex right in the gut.

It wasn’t about the magic.

She lost control because she cares too hard. Because she loves too hard. Because what fuels her Fire is passion, and the amount of passion she has for Maggie nearly started a five-alarm blaze.

Alex walks over to Maggie, nearly in a haze. She can see red and orange flitting across her vision, but it’s different than when she’s mad. Then it’s tendrils of red, fogging up what she can see like a windshield in the cold darkness. But this isn’t like that. This is the soft orange of quiet embers, and it’s not a fog but series of sparks. A million small explosions.

And between every small explosion is a riot of golden yellow magic, spinning and cartwheeling and flickering across the world.

She reaches up, and her hands are steady.

She cups Maggie’s dripping wet hair in her hands and, with the smallest wisp of a thought, gently heats it until it dries, thick and smooth and curled.

 

* * *

 

Over breakfast, Maggie suggests that they call Kara and Lena and build a cardinal shield. “I think it’ll help ground you,” Maggie says softly. “I think being that anchored and balanced inside of magic, inside of that shield, will help sort of reset you.”

And Alex isn’t entirely sure that she needs to be reset, because now that she’s started to embrace how passionate she is about Maggie, everything is feeling a lot more balanced already, but she nods anyway. She doesn’t think she’ll ever say no to the impossibly powerful feeling of being inside of a cardinal shield.

So she calls Kara, who she knows has kept in touch with Lena, and they set it up for the next day.

“Where should we do it?” Alex asks, taking a last bite of her eggs. She’s thinking they’ll do it back at USDMAMANC, but Maggie surprises her.

“Let’s do it here.”

Alex blinks a couple times. At Maggie’s apartment? She’d thought that Maggie would want the USDMAMANC room’s strong shields. But Maggie seems to guess her hesitation. “We can do it without the external shields. We’ve done it before.” And they have. For their final test, their instructors had made them do it outside, in a courtyard. “And, besides. For me – for all Earth mages – we work best on familiar land. It’s easier to ground my magic in a place that knows me.”

And Alex hears what Maggie doesn’t say – that controlling Alex is a lot of work, and Maggie can use all the head starts she can get, just in case Alex loses control again.

So Alex just nods, and texts Kara the address.

 

* * *

 

Kara and Lena come over the next day at 11am sharp. Well, Lena knocks on the door at 11:00am, but Alex had felt her magic show up at 10:57 and wait patiently out of sight until 11:00. And Kara had rushed up, out of breath, like she’d run the last couple blocks, at 11:02.

Alex has been there since 10:48, because everything inside of her was screaming so loudly to be with Maggie that she’d accidentally driven 60 miles per hour in a 35 zone the entire way.

And from the way Maggie’d looked at her when she came in, and the way Maggie had reached out, almost automatically for her hand, and the way Maggie’s magic had positively thrown itself at Alex – she’s pretty sure that Maggie’s body was screaming at her too.

The four of them sit around and chat for a while. Maggie serves iced tea and mentions that she has some food in the fridge to help replenish them later. Kara pulls out a Tupperware of gooey brownies, and Lena a very nice brie and a bottle of wine for later.

Alex feels a jolt of guilt that she hasn’t brought anything – especially because they’re doing this for her – but she’s immediately soothed by the gentle tickle of a wave at her feet. It doesn’t swamp or pull her. It’s not threatening in any way, it just licks at her ankles, for all the world like the cool trickle of a creek on her bare feet after a long, hot hike.

She looks up at Kara, who looks at her with nothing but love and affection. Alex sends a little puff of heat over to her little sister, settling it at her toes, because Kara has terrible circulation and her feet are always cold.

Kara grins at her, and Alex lets her love for her sister take root inside of her, like a log that’s solidly catching for the first time.

 

* * *

 

They stand loosely in a circle. Maggie moves one step in, taking a deep breath. She lets herself settle before she reaches out a hand.

Alex is already stepping forward before she processes the word Maggie’s said. “Kara.”

It hits Alex like a punch, like a muddy snowball flung right into her chest. She knows she lost control, but does Maggie have this little faith in her now?

Kara steps forward after a moment, clearly as surprised as Alex. She takes Maggie’s hand and they mesh. It’s not seamless but it stabilizes after a moment. They hold the mesh, their shield like the strength of a river at the bottom of a canyon. Fast and rushing and sturdy and permanent. Deadly narrow, wicked fast, and soothingly hypnotic.

Maggie calls Lena, who steps up to Kara smartly. It’s a couple of ragged breaths of this unbalanced feeling, like trying to stand on a raft when you can’t find the balance point as the water rolls underneath you. But then Lena clicks in, and suddenly it settles.

It’s strong and supported and the shield comes a full circle, Lena guiding it to protect above their heads as Maggie had for below their feet.

It’s a little longer than Alex would have expected before Maggie holds out her free hand. “Alex,” she says softly, and Alex beats down a stupid little flicker of disappointment that Maggie hasn’t called her Firefly.

Alex steps in, placing her hand gently in Lena’s and going to entwine her fingers with Maggie’s. But she can immediately tell that something is off. It’s not working. She can’t join it.

She’s never had trouble joining as a fourth before, and certainly not with this group of people. But it feels impossible. She takes a deep breath and, on her exhale, she lets herself go and tries to flow herself inside of Maggie.

But she can’t. It’s like back in those first weeks at USDMAMANC, when everything felt like she was using the wrong size key, or speaking the wrong language. She’s trying to slip into her most comfortable jacket, and she’s hitting her arm against a wall. She tries to push, almost forcing herself into the mesh. And it isn’t until she hears a little yelp from Maggie that she realizes that she’s causing physical pain.

She drops, immediately, bodily stepping out of the circle, her chest heaving. She looks with wide eyes as they all drop – Lena, then Kara, then Maggie. Kara’s magic flows quickly over Maggie before slipping over to Alex, like she’s trying to reassure herself that Alex is still there, that Alex is okay.

Maggie is looking at Alex with something like fear.

 

* * *

 

They try again, with the same result. They mix up the order – Kara, then Maggie, then Alex. But she can’t mesh.

Alex is beyond frustrated, and she’s trying her best not to freak out. She’s trying to keep her temper and her frustration down, but she can feel them catching in her chest. If she can’t do this, if she can’t mesh with these three women, then how is she ever going to trust herself again? How will she wield magic? How will she keep her control?

The horrible pamphlets from so many months ago float into her mind.

_An Untrained Mage has a Forty Percent chance of Accidentally Killing their entire Family!_

_Just because you’ve Controlled it before doesn’t mean You won’t Grievously Harm someone Tomorrow!_

_If You Can Do Magic, You’re A Danger To Yourself And Your Loved Ones_!

_You are a Danger to Everyone Around You!_

And she’d understood, back at USDMAMANC, that her magic was incredibly dangerous. But she’d never been that worried, because she’d had complete faith that she’d be able to control it. But now?

What if she really is a danger to everyone around her? What if she can never control it again?

So she’s trying not to freak out, but every successive failure means that the panic grips her heart a little more tightly.

And when Maggie takes her hand and just the two of them try to mesh, and even though Maggie’s magic is swirling on top of Alex’s skin, and Alex’s magic is flickering through Maggie’s hair, they can’t mesh.

For the very first time ever, they can’t mesh.

Alex’s fear comes up for her like a swamping wave.

 

* * *

 

After a very tense break for snacks and iced tea, it’s Lena who clears her throat.

“I’d like to try something.” Her face is as inscrutable as ever as she reaches a hand out for Alex. “Come mesh with me.”

Alex hesitates. She knows that Kara trusts Lena, but Alex isn’t sure that Lena can ground her in case she goes full inferno.

But Lena just looks at her, steady and firm. “Trust me.” She waggles her fingers in a sort of adorable way – one that’s totally at odds with her formal outfit and her tight bun and her entire way of being – and Alex can’t help but smile.

She rises from her chair and takes Lena’s hand.

Lena taps the back of Alex’s hand with her thumb. _One, two, three_.

On their exhale, they reach for each other, and no one is more surprised than Alex when they mesh. She takes a couple of deep breaths, just letting herself enjoy this feeling for a few seconds. Meshing with Lena is like soaring, but not in an ecstatic freefall like with Winn. It’s like flying a delicate, advanced plane. All engineering and piloting and skill and finesse.

And just the feeling of being in a mesh, of feeling her magic fully under her control, exhilarates Alex more than any flight ever possibly could.

Her eyes are closed, but she can feel herself grinning.

Lena says Kara’s name, and Alex’s eyes open. She and Lena are surrounded by ice-blue and red, embers and a crisp intelligent wind. Their mesh is one of practical, tactical brilliance.

And Kara can be a bit of a mess sometimes, but when she really focuses she can be meticulous, and she’s powerfully smart. She steps up, and Alex doesn’t even remember to be afraid of what will happen. Kara’s water doesn’t pull them down or make them heavy. She adroitly steps into the mesh, and if anything it’s like they’re flying faster, through warm, wet air.

Alex can feel Kara’s magic rush over her, not in an overwhelming deluge but in an effusive light shower. It caresses her, letting itself run all over her and embrace her now that she’s insulated a bit by Lena’s Air magic. Kara’s magic is exuberant about meshing with Alex, and Alex lets that love wash over her as she takes the opportunity to send hers over to wrap Kara up in the biggest, warmest, softest hug that she can, like a towel fresh from the dryer after too long in a cold swimming pool.

And Lena is holding them steady, holding them together, flying this plane. Alex feels beyond good. Fully in control, fully embodied. Fully prepared to use her magic and to call it back. To meet those creatures again, but on her own terms.

She’s jubilant as she and Kara reach out for Maggie.

She feels Maggie’s hand fold into hers, and she softens her edges for Maggie to slip right inside her.

But Maggie grates up against her, like a hot knife against a stone. Maggie grates and grinds across their shield, and she can’t mesh. She has her eyes closed, her face pinched tight in effort and worry. Her hand is shaking in Alex’s, clenching with some sort of death grip.

Maggie, after several long, excruciating minutes, drops their hands and steps back. Alex, Kara, and Lena all give themselves a moment to recover, repairing their edges and licking their wounds, before they drop again.

It’s only when they’ve all dropped, stepping back, that they all turn to look at Maggie again. She’s sunk onto her couch, her head in her hands. She’s shaking.

Alex can see Kara start to reach out with arms and with magic, but Lena gently stops her with a hand on her forearm. “Let’s give them a minute,” she murmurs, guiding Kara towards the front door and gracefully taking up her purse on the way.

They leave, and suddenly Alex is alone with Maggie.

 

* * *

 

“Maggie?” She feels like she’s flickering, even though she’s standing still, hovering over the couch, completely unsure if she should sit. “Are you, um, are you okay?”

It’s an idiotic question, but it feels rude not to ask it.

Maggie just shrugs a little, her elbows still resting heavily on her knees, her head still cradled in her hands.

Alex can see her own magic – both the sparks that now belong to Maggie and those from her own personal supply, rushing up and down Maggie’s body, like they’re desperately trying to give her any comfort they can. Not to be outdone, Alex gently calls her magic back, silently chastising it for invading Maggie’s personal space.

She softly sits on the couch, careful to leave space between their bodies.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.” Her voice is dull and flat, and Alex has never heard it like that before.

A thrill of worry shoots up Alex’s spine. “Is your magic okay?”

Maggie’s head snaps up, and Alex can immediately tell that she’s somewhere between frustrated and pissed. “I’m fine, Alex,” she barks.

Alex deliberately keeps her personal shield low, down on the gentlest simmer she can. She doesn’t quite hold her hands up in the air, but she flips her hands so they’re resting on her thighs, palms up and fingers splayed in clear surrender. She doesn’t know if she should say _I’m sorry_ or _I had to ask_. She’s worried if she opens her mouth at all, it’ll turn into a cutting _Sorry for caring about you_.

But Maggie saves her from having to respond. “No, wait.” She huffs a little, rolling her eyes at herself, and Alex can see her Earth shield creeping up higher and higher. “I’m sorry. That was…” She shakes her head again, and Alex remembers that Earth mages are stubborn as a rule, and a little mule-headed, and that the downside of being known for nurturing others is that they often can’t handle being taken care of, even when they need it.

She doesn’t know how to help. Her instinct is to go in like Fire, to burn down Maggie’s shields until she has to let Alex in. To absolutely bowl her over with affection and caring. But she knows Maggie well enough to know that their shields are equally matched, and that Kara and Lena might disapprove of walking back into a full-on mage battle.

She can picture the pamphlet Kevin would write and distribute to the next USDMAMANC cohort: _It is a very Stupid Idea to set your Friends on Fire just to Show Them that you Care about them!_

So Alex keeps her shield low, but she gives her magic a little nudge, encouraging it to run over to surround Maggie with comforting red sparks and orange embers.

She gets up, walking softly to the kitchen and bringing back Kara’s brownies and two glasses of water. She turns on Maggie’s tv, clicking quickly to a Netflix documentary on plants. She forces herself to just sit, quiet and still and grounded, a foot or so away, quietly munching on a delightfully underbaked brownie and watching time-lapse footage of bamboo growing.

It’s the most un-Firelike thing she’s ever done.

But, after maybe ten minutes, Maggie says something.

“I can’t believe it was me. The whole time, _I_ was the reason you couldn’t mesh.” She sounds defeated and a little scared, and Alex just wants to smother her with comforting flames.

“It’s okay,” she starts, but Maggie cuts her off.

“It isn’t. I thought it was you, but it…it was me.”

Alex shrugs, a little uncomfortable. She doesn’t know a polite way of saying _yeah, for sure, but you’re so pretty and electric and I’m so desperate to be around you that actually I don’t care right now_.

“Do you, um, have a guess why?”

Maggie lets out a shuddering breath and Alex feels Maggie’s magic tremble a little, get a little colder, shrink a little bit into itself. So, that’s a yes.

But Alex can’t quite believe that she says it.

“Yeah. It. I was…” Maggie bites her lip, and more of Alex’s magic rushes over to wrap her up. “I was scared.” Alex’s heart starts to quietly scream. “I _am_ scared.”

Alex pulls her magic back in, keeping an iron grip on her shield as her whole body trembles. She cares so fucking much. Her voice shakes, but that’s better than distressed flames shooting out in Maggie’s living room. “Of me?”

Maggie’s magic answers before she can, flinging itself over to Alex and nearly burying her in a heap of affection. It’s a little smothering, like when Kara used to jump on top of Alex when she’d slept in for too long, pining her underneath her blankets and nattering at her for minutes on end. But Alex can feel the desperate caring in this, and so she lets herself be overtaken by it.

So Maggie doesn’t have to say anything, because her magic is saying more than she ever would and she knows it, but she says it anyway. “No! Alex, no. Not of you. I’ve never been scared of you, not even in the alley.”

Maggie’s magic settles on Alex’s body, coating her in yellows and golden browns and few crisp, tender greens. “Then what?”

“I…” Maggie closes her eyes, a pained look on her face. “This,” she finally says. And she doesn’t have to make the gesture between their bodies that she does, because there’s only one possible _this_.

And before Alex can even start to think that Maggie doesn’t want this connection – doesn’t want _Alex_ – her magic tightens around Alex, gripping her with the strength of a tree whose roots can tear up a whole mountainside. There’s a quiet determination to her magic, like it’s planting itself firmly with Alex, regardless of what its mage may be thinking.

Alex lets herself sink into its vice-like grip.

“I was scared for you, but I think I was really…I’m scared of how much I’m _feeling_ , with you.”

And then, like the whoosh of a match hitting dry leaves, it all clicks for Alex.

She stands, Maggie’s magic moving smoothly with her limbs. She holds out a hand to Maggie. “Come sit with me.”

 

* * *

 

She leads Maggie over to an open space near the windows, and she sinks down to the floor, crossing her legs underneath herself. Maggie hesitates, and Alex rolls her eyes a little. “You need to ground yourself,” she says, her voice definitely a little less patient than would befit a teacher. “Come sit, Earthworm.”

Maggie’s already halfway through folding herself down, but she pauses for just a second as the word hits her ears. “ _Earthworm_?” Her voice is high and incredulous, and Alex can’t help but grin. Maggie sinks the rest of the way to the floor. “Is that really the best you can do?”

“Hey!” Alex pretends to be affronted just to keep the small smile on Maggie’s face. “Have some respect! Earthworms are the bedrock of soil fertility.” She lets herself arch a combative eyebrow, purely for the show of it. “I’d have thought that you of all people would know that, Ms. PhD in Earth Magic.”

And it works perfectly. Maggie actually laughs, shaking her head at how ridiculous Alex is being. Maggie looks down at the ground, cupping her hands around her mouth. “I mean y’all no disrespect, little worms,” she calls down.

Still grinning, Alex holds out both of her hands, palms up.

Maggie takes a deep breath. She’s nervous.

“Come on, Earthworm,” Alex encourages softly. “Come find me.”

 

* * *

 

Maggie is fully grounded, sitting on top of the earth that knows her so well. Being indoors is never ideal for an Earth mage, but she’s surrounded by the plants she’s tenderly raised from seedlings, on a patch of land that’s richer because of her magic. She’s in a place that will grant her grace and kindness and loving support. She’s in her own home, but her hands are still quivering in Alex’s.

But Alex just rubs her thumbs on the tops of Maggie’s hands, and she pitches her voice as low and soft and hypnotic as she can. She thinks about how mesmerizing and whole she feels when she stares into the flames of a campfire.

She closes her eyes, and softly encourages Maggie to do the same.

“I know that you’re afraid of this,” she starts. “The way our magic melts together. The way you’re always with me. How easy this has always been for us. I know that’s unsettling to you. Destabilizing. I know it makes you feel like you can’t quite ground yourself. Like the very earth below you is off-kilter.”

Maggie makes a little sound, like she can’t quite believe that Alex knows this about her.

“I know that your magic is methodical and careful, built brick by brick from the ground up. I know that your magic is instinctive and stable, slow to change. Your magic is the growth of a redwood tree over centuries, the formation of mountains over millennia. Of all of us, your magic is the steadiest. You’re the one, among all of us, who makes things that are permanent. Your Earth magic is one of slow growth, meticulous and unflappable and serene. Your magic, more than any other, is magic made from calm, from the layering of incremental change.”

She can feel Maggie’s hands softly relaxing into her own as she speaks.

“And this,” Alex squeezes her hands a little bit. “This is fast, and irrational, and implausible, and unpredictable. Your magic is stable and firm and this is a whirlwind. This is measured from one breath to the next, and your magic is measured across the history of the galaxy.”

Alex completely drops her shield for the first time since she learned how to hold it. She completely drops her shield and she lets Maggie’s magic flow over her. Lets Maggie deep inside of herself in a way she never has.

“My Fire magic is about passion. It’s about the snap of a match, the catch of a dry leaf, the first flicker of a flame against a log. Fire magic has the endurance of a wildfire, the strength of the sun, the eternity of magma. But my magic is quixotic and ever-changing.” She takes a little breath. “My magic comes from my passions. From what I care about.”

She twists her fingers, slipping them between Maggie’s. “From who I care about.”

Maggie sucks in a little breath.

“What I feel for you, how I care about you, that’s where my magic comes from. What I feel between us is the difference between a simmering ember and a cascade of flames. That moment, when the fresh tinder catches, that’s _this_.” She takes another breath and she says something that they both know is about more than her magic. “My magic is hot and wanting and greedy. My magic is desperate for more. My magic is insatiable, and that hunger is what fuels it. My magic is the sun and the stars and the heat below our feet. My magic is strong because of how much I feel.”

Maggie is silent, but she’s actively holding Alex’s hands. She’s not grabbing or gripping but Alex can feel her, steady and strong and earnest, holding Alex’s fingers between her own.

“And you’re coming in like Earth, trying to put what you feel aside. Trying to perform despite this. But that’s not going to work. Not with me. Not with us.”

She takes a shuddering breath, and then she says it.

“My magic tastes like cinnamon and cayenne, like smoke and roasted sugar. Like a peaty whiskey in the cold air. It’s hot spiced rum, with just a hint of burnt caramel. My magic feels like a blanket in front of a fire on a long, dark winter’s night.”

She smooths her thumbs over Maggie’s hands and she leans forward, just a little bit. “Come find me there,” she breathes. “Reach out, and come find me in a toasted, soft s’more. Find me where my orange embers are just starting to catch and turn to deep, hot flames. Reach out with your heart, and let yourself feel this. Let it carry you to me.”

And Alex’s shields are completely down, so Maggie could smother her in a heartbeat, but she doesn’t. Maggie reaches out, and her magic is trembling but her breath is steady, and with the speed and determination of a time-lapsed shoot of bamboo growing from a seedling to a tower, she finds Alex.

She finds Alex, and they mesh. Alex brings her own shield up, just the tiniest bit, within the loving shelter of Maggie’s magic. But this time it’s the flames that ground them while Maggie’s Earth magic casts back and forth between them, not aimless but free.

Maggie shudders and she drops her head forward enough that her forehead rests on Alex’s.

“God, Firefly,” she whispers, and her voice is a little bit wrecked. “I feel so _much_.”

Alex shifts just enough to press a long, warm kiss against her cheek. “I know,” she breathes. “But I’ve got you.”

And Maggie nods, dropping her head down to Alex’s shoulder, burrowing gently into Alex’s neck.

It’s all Alex can do to say it again, as her magic builds a tender fortress around them. “I’ve got you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, it is my ultimate pleasure to share this story with you all. Thank you for having the patience of an Earth mage as I so slowly churn these out.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, my best imaginary friends.
> 
> Come visit me on my tumblr (performativezippers) and twitter (p_zippers) to learn useless things about my life, read my rants, see endless gifs about dinosaurs, and support my other work. Heart ya.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and being the best imaginary friends in the world.
> 
> Come visit me on my tumblr (performativezippers) and twitter (p_zippers) to learn useless things about my life, read my rants, and support my other work. heart ya.


End file.
